C6 Corvettes & security

[Silver C6]

Apologies for reviving what you may consider a "done & dusted" topic, but can anyone help me with this?

I recently bought a 2007 (Euro mainland spec) C6 that was registered/used abroad (Dutch language COC) until Sept 2008 and then sold by Stratstone Reading to it's one previous UK owner. As to be expected, the Aviva insurance guy asked if it has a Thatcham Cat 1 alarm & immobiliser. I told him it did as part of the original equipment (OE) spec, based on a "Thatcham" internet search listing showing that all Corvettes from May 00 have Cat 1 compliant alarms/immobilisers. It was only later that I noted that this only applied to "UK dealer spec vehicles"

I notice from a previous PH posting by Mitch, that C6s supplied new in the UK in the Stratstone time were built to Belgian spec and then converted to UK spec/requirements (hope that's right Mitch). This obviously included the UK lights. My question is, does my mainland Europe spec car (now fitted with UK lights) have an OE Cat 1 compliant alarm/immobiliser? Or put it another way around, were new Stratstone UK supplied cars fitted with a specific/unique UK Thatcham Cat 1 alarm/immobiliser different to Euro mainland spec cars? -

Thanks

Edited by Silver C6 on Saturday 17th March 19:43

[mitch_]

No difference other than the headlights were swapped. The only real differences required to get the car to Cat 1 were ultrasonic interior sensors and steering column lock. You're fine Peter!

[Silver C6]

Mitch, Thanks & Thanks again for all the fantastic help & advice you have given me over the last couple of weeks. Much appreciated.

[GW65]

Yep, all Strats did was to fit a Tracker Horizon. Or should I say that's what they claimed to do...but on my car only fitted a Tracker Monitor. Fortunately Tracker stepped in on my behalf and "convinced" Strats to fit a Horizon and give me a free lifetime sub. I would advise anyone with a Strats car to check they have the right Tracker fitted.

[JimexPL]

GW65 said:

Yep, all Strats did was to fit a Tracker Horizon. Or should I say that's what they claimed to do...but on my car only fitted a Tracker Monitor. Fortunately Tracker stepped in on my behalf and "convinced" Strats to fit a Horizon and give me a free lifetime sub. I would advise anyone with a Strats car to check they have the right Tracker fitted.

A tracker wasn't needed for the Thatcham approval.
Monitors were fitted to any new Corvette that spent more than a couple of weeks in stock because of their trade insurance policy. It was the same with the Cadillacs.
Locking wheel nuts are though, and if these are missing on a Euro spec car it generally means that the car was originally imported from the continent (or forgotten at pdi...).

The Belgians occasionally forgot to fit Rhd headlights, so some cars went out with the wrong ones fitted. Similarly, when pricing was in our favour we sold some vehicles to Europe and the owners didn't spend the money swapping the headlights back, so there's always the possibility that a mainland Euro car has Rhd lights on it if originally supplied by Stratstone.

I seem to recall that the additional chassis number sticker near the door catch was also part of the Thatcham rating. If your car was supplied before mid 2006 by a Stratstone dealer other than Park Lane it might be missing this.

When I took over Park Lane there was a cupboard with over 60 sets of Tracker paperwork in it, which I spent several months trying to reunite with the correct cars!

[GW65]

JimexPL said:

A tracker wasn't needed for the Thatcham approval.
Monitors were fitted to any new Corvette that spent more than a couple of weeks in stock because of their trade insurance policy. It was the same with the Cadillacs.

Agree that it's not needed for Thatcham approval...but it was a requirement from most insurers to have an Horizon or better, so not much fun to discover that my car was effectively uninsured. Sadly, in this case it was pure incompetence, as my car was never in stock at Strats (it was shipped from the Netherlands and hardly touched the sides at Strats).

[Silver C6]

James/Gary, Thanks for your comments/info. You really do have to know what you are doing/know the history when buying used. I don't have the locking wheel nuts, or the additional chassis number sticker near the door catch. Can you tell me where those Stratstone (additional?) monitors were fitted/what they look like? Can't seem to see any of those either. I am a confused on this. The car has intrusion sensors as part of the standard theft deterrent system (TDS) I understand. Is the small grill on the drivers side inside A pillar plastic covering the standard TDS sensor? If so, how do the (additional?/ultrasonic?) monitors interface with the standard TDS?

[GW65]

Silver C6 said:

James/Gary, Thanks for your comments/info. You really do have to know what you are doing/know the history when buying used. I don't have the locking wheel nuts, or the additional chassis number sticker near the door catch. Can you tell me where those Stratstone (additional?) monitors were fitted/what they look like? Can't seem to see any of those either. I am a confused on this. The car has intrusion sensors as part of the standard theft deterrent system (TDS) I understand. Is the small grill on the drivers side inside A pillar plastic covering the standard TDS sensor? If so, how do the (additional?/ultrasonic?) monitors interface with the standard TDS?

I think the widget on the A pillar is for the voice activation, but I could be wrong. You can tell if you have the intrusion sensors by opening the glovebox and looking for a button on the left-hand frame. If you push it you'll see messages on the DIC alternating between "intrusion sensor on" and "intrusion sensor off" (the latter's very useful if you want to leave the car with the roof down or roof panels out without the alarm going off all the time!).

The Tracker is supposed to be hidden, so unless you start pulling panels you won't see anything. If you don't have any paperwork (or the card with the number on) you could call Tracker and see if they can help - they'll ask LOTS of security questions, but then you'd expect them to! When the car changes owner the paperwork's supposed to be transferred so that contact details can be updated (and appropriate fees charged).

Sadly, like all modern security gizmos, there's a lot of reliance on previous owners remembering to hand everything over...and if a dealer gets inserted in the chain then there's even more scope for things going missing.

[mitch_]

I am slightly confused here. Were Stratstone supplying Trackers on all new C6's or were they just being fitted to cars that were in stock over a certain number of days?

Peter, as your car came from mainland Europe you won't have any lockin wheel nuts nor would it have a tracker unless it's previous owner paid for one. The only element missing from your car for Thatcham are locking wheel nuts and in all honesty I take them off as they are ugly and corrode. the ultrasonics are visible in the centre of the roof line directly above the centre console. The A pillar fitting is a microphone.

[malc350]

So is it just the European cars that have Thatcham Cat 1 security? If so was this fitted by dealers? This subject has some relevance to me as the potential purchaser of a C6 and my insurance company are pretty much saying they'll only quote based on Cat 1 security being fitted.

I once walked away from a C4 that I would have otherwise bought as it had a Clifford alarm that was operated by its own remote while the factory remote was used for some function or other (the car came with keyless entry from the factory).

Anyway opening and starting it seemed to be a combination of using both remotes and all I could think was "one day soon this is going to leave me stranded and nobody's going to be able to fix it....)

Malc

[JimexPL]

mitch_ said:

I am slightly confused here. Were Stratstone supplying Trackers on all new C6's or were they just being fitted to cars that were in stock over a certain number of days?

Peter, as your car came from mainland Europe you won't have any lockin wheel nuts nor would it have a tracker unless it's previous owner paid for one. The only element missing from your car for Thatcham are locking wheel nuts and in all honesty I take them off as they are ugly and corrode. the ultrasonics are visible in the centre of the roof line directly above the centre console. The A pillar fitting is a microphone.

All CCH vehicles that were marked as stock had a tracker monitor fitted. Quite a few customer sold cars also had tracker monitors fitted as it was such a common pdi routine at Wavendon. The only ones that slipped through the net were vehicles delivered to Birmingham for the pdi; these generally were also missing the locking wheel nuts and silver chassis sticker.

In pre-Bluetooth vetted the mic on the 'A' pillar is meant to alter the eq settings on the stereo to account for ambient noise, but given that the Bose speakers are mediocre in the first place I doubt you'd ever know if it was working correctly!

[mitch_]

So the Tracker thing was just Stratstone confusing the job then. If ever there was a window to complicate things then you could bet the 'dragon would find it.

Oh and the stereo isn't so mediocre anymore thanks to new neodymium drivers.

Malc, only Euro spec cars are Thatcham rated. The lack of ultrasonics and steering column lock mean U.S. cars don't meet the requirements. They are factory installed in Bowling Green and are not dealer or depot retrofit.

[Vet Guru]

JimexPL said:

mitch_ said:

I am slightly confused here. Were Stratstone supplying Trackers on all new C6's or were they just being fitted to cars that were in stock over a certain number of days?

Peter, as your car came from mainland Europe you won't have any lockin wheel nuts nor would it have a tracker unless it's previous owner paid for one. The only element missing from your car for Thatcham are locking wheel nuts and in all honesty I take them off as they are ugly and corrode. the ultrasonics are visible in the centre of the roof line directly above the centre console. The A pillar fitting is a microphone.

All CCH vehicles that were marked as stock had a tracker monitor fitted. Quite a few customer sold cars also had tracker monitors fitted as it was such a common pdi routine at Wavendon. The only ones that slipped through the net were vehicles delivered to Birmingham for the pdi; these generally were also missing the locking wheel nuts and silver chassis sticker.

In pre-Bluetooth vetted the mic on the 'A' pillar is meant to alter the eq settings on the stereo to account for ambient noise, but given that the Bose speakers are mediocre in the first place I doubt you'd ever know if it was working correctly!

When I bought my red C6 it was all done correct at Park lane the yellow one bought from Birmingham not sure if they ever looked at the car just stamped the PDI, I ended up having Luton head office take the car and fit the locking wheel bolts and the window etching too.

[Silver C6]

James/Gary/Mitch - Thanks, I am learning all the time. As you will have noticed, I did not understand that James's reference above to monitors meant a Tracker being installed. Don't think I have a Tracker on mine as have no paperwork on it. Unfortunately, for whatever reason(s), the sole UK owner has not wanted to help me on my 2 questions about the cars pre UK (Sept 2008) history & the lights, other than texting me to say that he bought it from Stratstones in Sept 2008 (he had not bought/used it in Europe before then). That contradicted the dealers original PH advert that it was a "one owner car."

Mitch, as you know, I bought this car suspecting that the dealer had bought it with 2 sets of lights (UK & Euro)and had put the Euro lights back on the car, advertising the UK lights on PH. Was also wondering if the transparent roof he was also advertising on PH was off my (twin roof?) car also. One of the questions I asked him when viewing the car was where is the RPO sticker on a C6 (couldn't find them in the rear bins as on the C4)? He said there aren't any on a C6 (naive me). Found it today in the passenger glove compartment of course.

So thanks to the James info above re the lights, I don't know what the real story is on my lights. Mitch, your theory is probably right i.e. the car never had UK spec lights on it, despite being in the UK for over 3 years and having 3 MOTs from one of the two UK authorised Corvette repairers. As I mentioned, the (no favours) local garage that MOTs my cars, told me they would "pass" the car with the Euro lights on it, describing the beam pattern as "level" and commenting that a "kick up" to the left used to be in the MOT, but is no longer. In the dealer's defence, I don't think he had the car long and may not have noticed the Euro lights.

Or maybe he did, thinking that I would not notice as the car had been MOT'd the week before. Of course comments to the effect that "this is Stratstone car and you are lucky to find it as many have been exported to Europe/I haven't done an HPI on it)" initially leads you to believe that it is a Strat/UK car from new car. That's until you have the closer look at the V5 and get your HPI report. My look at the glove compartment RPO sticker today shows the CF7 code, so the car came new with only the one body colour roof.

My remaining(unsolved)query on the car (as you again know Mitch) is on the early (PDI & service) entries in the service book. I see from other PH posts, that round about the time the previous owner bought the car from Stratstone Reading (Sept 2008), the "helpful" service manager was a guy called Mark. Was that Mark "Fuller" by any chance, or had a similar surname?

Thanks again gents. My problem in life is even though I have been in the CCUK/owned a C4 for 23 years, I work as a contractor all over the country and sometimes abroad. As a result, I can't attend the local CCUK meets. Certainly would have helped when buying this car, if I had some C6 owning contacts.

[akeithj]

A very interesting thread.
This is probably one for James.
I bought my car new from Stratstone Gateshead in October 2007, the car was not in stock at the Gateshead garage and was transported there from another location, possibly Wavendon?. I was told at the time it was the last remaining black Z06 in stock anywhere within the Stratstone network. There was never any mention of a tracker being fitted, nor did I receive a COC at the time of purchase, although with Jame's help I did eventually manage to obtain one from the official receiver at in Belgium.
Is there any way to find out if my car was one of those fitted with a tracker?

[JimexPL]

akeithj said:

A very interesting thread.
This is probably one for James.
I bought my car new from Stratstone Gateshead in October 2007, the car was not in stock at the Gateshead garage and was transported there from another location, possibly Wavendon?. I was told at the time it was the last remaining black Z06 in stock anywhere within the Stratstone network. There was never any mention of a tracker being fitted, nor did I receive a COC at the time of purchase, although with Jame's help I did eventually manage to obtain one from the official receiver at in Belgium.
Is there any way to find out if my car was one of those fitted with a tracker?

I'm pretty sure that your car did come directly from Wavendon. As to whether it has Tracker fitted you would need to find someone at Pendragon that could access the CCH accounts and check the costings that went against the initial prep of the car. As Stratstone Cadillac, Corvette & Hummer no longer exists the only people that would be able to access such information would be Pendragon Head Office (Loxley House). Try calling them and see if you get hold of anyone helpful in accounts!
Tracker should also have a record of the fitting, probably by the chassis number if it was done prior to registration. Again, to confirm this you need to find someone helpful at Tracker Head Office.

[JimexPL]

Silver C6 said:

James/Gary/Mitch - Thanks...

Euro cars never had a twin roof option; It was one or the other, unless a customer ordered an additional roof.

Reading never had a service manager. I was asked to run both Reading and Park Lane in Jan 2008 but knew that the writing was on the wall for the franchise so moved elsewhere within Stratstone. There was a regional manager and a technician called Mark, and for most of the time that Reading was open Simon was dealer principle, with Elliot and Gavin as salesmen.

What are the first 2 letters of your reg number? 99% of 06-07 cars from Stratstone will begin with an F.

[mitch_]

It is a Reading registered car James. It was originally registered elsewhere in Europe and latterly in the U.K. There is no traceable warranty history either. Peter's problem is that there are two services marked in his book but not stamped so unless the name of the person on the stamps can be traced it will be impossible to know who did them......

[Silver C6]

James, The first 2 letters are RX. The car documentation includes a Sept 2008 DVLA V948 "Number Plate Authorisation Certificate" issued by the Theale (near Reading) local DVLA office.

As Mitch knows, the service book has no dealer stamps on the PDI page, or for the first 2 services (second one in Sept 2008, same time the car was allegedly being sold/UK registered by Stratstone Reading). What's in the book for these are signatures/details recorded by what looks like an "M. Fuller." Looks like they/the service book were (re)created/written up at the same time with the same pen. So for all I know, the original service book may have been lost. Or the car may have been a Euro mainland finance "repo car" i.e. they reposessed the car & keys but not the books.

For anyone reading this and thinking of buying an early used Strat UK or Euro spec C6 with incomplete history/stamps in the book, I think it is worth mentioning one of Mitch's comments to me. That is that due to the withdrawal of Stratstone and the demise of Kroymans, it is highly unlikely (or impossible) that you will be able to get any further service history information on the car. Even a Dutch language COC does not mean that the car was first registered/used in Belgium or the Netherlands. You can and I have obtained from Whitequay (thanks guys) a printout showing the car's warranty history/jobs.

[Vet Guru]

mitch_ said:

It is a Reading registered car James. It was originally registered elsewhere in Europe and latterly in the U.K. There is no traceable warranty history either. Peter's problem is that there are two services marked in his book but not stamped so unless the name of the person on the stamps can be traced it will be impossible to know who did them......

Sounds like Reading as they hardly ever stamped anyones book. I think Steve at Wavendon could maybe tell if it's been done with Stratstone. Or maybe Peter just filled it in himself before selling it?? What an odd man he is.