2022 C8 Stingray convertible 3LT bought through M&A Auto Sales, and a whistle i could not find

rob, Charlotte. two reasons for this thread. paula asked for purchase write ups on this board, and i have a noise i can't find and figured the C8 people here might know it.

the car: 2022 Stingray convertible, 3LT with Z51, Rapid Blue over the Natural tan interior, 8,140 miles on the dash photo. bank repo, parked at a lender's lot in Bolingbrook, Illinois, out past the Chicago suburbs. i bought it through m&a auto sales, which brokers repos for lenders. there's no lot to walk. the car stays where the bank parked it and you bid off photos and a video.

numbers, since this board asks. the bidding is sealed, so i typed 78,400 into the box the second week of May and that was my whole say in it. what i bid is what i paid, they don't stack a premium onto the hammer. Bolingbrook to my house is about 790 road miles and the first 1,000 are free, so delivery cost me nothing. wired it on a monday, it came off an open carrier on my street 13 days later.

for a yardstick, a 2022 3LT vert with 11k on it was sitting at a dealer in Concord at 86,995 that same week, plus whatever doc fee they felt like that day.

the listing was on mandaautollc.com, 58 photos and a walkaround video. car is clean, drives right, and i'm happy with it except for one thing. top up, somewhere above 55, there's a thin whistle from behind my left shoulder. top down it's gone. i've taped the mirror, checked the window is all the way up, sprayed the door seals. still there. ideas welcome.

top deck of an open carrier, nine cars on it. the car has the front lift option, it was in the options photo on the m&a listing, and the driver knew to raise it before he drove up. he also laid two long planks at the bottom of the ramps. said he moves two or three of these a month and the trick is going slow and never trusting the lift to hold on its own. i went over the nose with a flashlight. no scrape that wasn't already in the photos.

hector, tender is on the list. it's been fine so far.

corvette_tech_hector wroteask them to take it on the highway with a tech in the passenger seat

did exactly that tuesday. first oil change at the Chevy store in Matthews, and i asked for a ride along. the tech heard it before we got to the 485 ramp. back in the bay he had it in about ten minutes: the rubber seal along the back edge of the rear roof panel, driver side, was folded under for three inches or so. you'd never see it unless you knew to look.

he worked it back into its channel with a plastic tool and a little silicone paste. half an hour of labor, 85 dollars on top of the oil change. drove home at 70 with nothing but tire noise. three weeks of chasing it with tape and spray, fixed by a guy who has seen it before.

his guess is somebody cycled the top at the yard with the seal dry and it caught on the way down. i didn't bother calling M and A about an 85 dollar fix, it wasn't worth anybody's time. tires read 4121 by the way, hector, week 41 of 2021, plenty of tread left for this year.

title came separately, FedEx, six days after the car. that was the slowest part of the whole thing. i emailed on day three asking where it was and the answer came back the next afternoon, polite and accurate, but i'd have liked a tracking number up front without asking.

what was in the envelope: the Illinois title, assigned to me by the bank and stamped lien released, the lender's bill of sale naming the m&a people as broker, and an odometer statement. NC DMV in Matthews wanted the NC inspection done first, twenty minutes at a lube place on Monroe Road. highway use tax here is 3 percent, so 2,352 on 78,400. title and plate another hundred and change. one visit, fifty minutes waiting for my number.

the part i left out of the first post. this was my second try. in March i bid on a 2021 C8 coupe, 2LT, Torch Red, 14k miles, through the same broker out of Independence, and i lost it. you never see the winning number, so whether i came up short by a tank of gas or by a used Civic, i'll never know. i had 64,000 in, which i still think was fair. it bugged me for a week. that's the deal with blind bids, there's no feedback. you just try again on the next car.

two answers.

gulf, yes. the walkaround on the listing was 3:40 long, top down and back up in one take, rear glass too. that was half the reason i bid at all. i also asked for a second clip with the engine running and the car sitting level, and it showed up in my inbox two days later. i would not bid on a convertible without a full top cycle on video, period.

tom, it's quieter than the C6 soft top i had before by a mile. it is not a coupe. at 75 on I-77 it's normal talking voice. since the dealer fixed the seal the loudest thing in the car is the tires, the 4S are loud on chip seal. i haven't needed earplugs once.

update, the trip, and the one thing that went wrong on it. took it up the Blue Ridge Parkway over labor day, Blowing Rock to Little Switzerland and back, then the next weekend across to Deals Gap with a buddy in a C7. 1,140 miles for the two trips. it's at 9,980 now.

the problem. it sat in the garage five days before the Deals Gap run and i hadn't bought the tender yet, hector. we stopped for gas in Robbinsville, top down, a storm coming over the ridge, and the top would not move. the dash put up a low battery message even with the engine running. i shut it off, waited a minute, restarted, and it went up with about thirty seconds to spare. bought a CTEK MXS 5.0 on the way home, around 70 dollars, and it lives on it now. not the car's fault. but nobody tells you the roof cares about voltage.

the 6 month warranty runs to about november and i haven't needed it. all in: 78,400 for the car, 2,352 tax, about a hundred in tags, 85 for the seal, 70 for the tender. the rear tires will be next spring's problem. the m&a auction if anybody is curious what's sitting in lender yards this month, it turns over fast.