​Trip to Jim Mero's Shop 06/18~06/19

On Tuesday morning Larry & Joy Greenwalt along with Bill & Erika Lapham headed off to Goodrich Michigan where Jim Mero's home and shop is located. The reason for the trip was to have their C6's Magnetic Ride updated with Jim's newly released advancements. Jim had been a ride and handling engineer for 30 years with most of them in Corvettes. Meeting him in person was a real treat as he recounted his experiences with tuning Corvettes over the years. He is the driver that set all of the Corvette records at Nurburgring including an 'angry cold tires' 7:04 with the ZR1. This upgrade was originally done for C7's and only available through Chevy dealers. The ones done for all of the C7's were by Jim after getting an epiphany of how Magnetic ride should behave while doing work for the ZR1. He then proceeded to sell the update idea to GM and programmed it for all of the C7 models that had the suspension. After retiring from GM he decided to take on C6's and even purchased a Grand Sport as his test mule. After doing the GS he then did friends ZR1 and now has both programmed and ready for installation. Larry and Bill were number 10 and 11, so are early adopters, and can not be more pleased with the upgrade. From pulling in to the garage and backing out it only took 15 minutes for each Corvette. The hardest part is hooking the cable up to the port under the dash and then letting Jim do his software magic while each owner sat and watched it happen, with a 2 minute wait at the end to let the flash memory get written to the controller. In the drive afterwards to the motel they could feel the changed ride and after overnight the difference was fully felt by both drivers and riders. The Corvettes are now more compliant over rougher roads and just have a much better feel overall. Their drive home included some of Jim's test roads on their way to Novi, where Bill & Erika stopped by their first house that they lived in from '71-'73. They can guarantee that the trees are much bigger now as there were very few back then in the subdivision. From there they headed by Michigan International Speedway for a few pictures and then on to Jonesville Michigan for lunch at a local coffee shop. The trip then got wet as they headed down I-69, US-24 and finally US-31 pretty much through hard rain. Both Corvettes again did really well as the upgrade makes the tires more able to handle the bad conditions much easier. Had it been available when C7's were first out possibly some C6 owners would not have traded to C7's.

To learn more about Jim and his upgrades visit his website and be sure to read his blogs.
To learn more about the C7 Magnetic Ride Upgrade use this Corvette Online Link.