Cardboard Under The LS6, NCM Treasures & Family Time, Corvette Shill Bidding Strikes Again

Welcome back to the CorvSport rabbit hole, where curiosity fuels us, horsepower is our language, and another story is always waiting to be uncovered! With nearly 6,000 articles in the CorvSport archives, we’ve built a deep reservoir of Corvette knowledge, history, market insight, and enthusiast-driven storytelling that reaches far beyond the spec sheet. But here’s the beauty of being Corvette Obsessed: no matter how much ground we cover, this hobby never runs out of surprises. Today, we’re chasing a few fresh twists in the Corvette saga, from the new-generation LS6 that may have owners reaching for the cardboard, to the people and places keeping the Corvette legacy alive across generations, and an auction controversy that reminds us even the hottest hardware can’t outrun human nature. So buckle up, because this edition of our exclusive Corvette Obsessed Newsletter proves once again that around here, the stories are just as compelling as the cars themselves!

What We Have Lined Up For You Today:

Worse Than The C5 Leaky Butt? Paranoid Owners Frantically Placing Cardboard Under Their LS6-Equipped Corvettes
Rare Corvettes, Family Bonds & A New Way To Experience The NCM
Another Corvette Lands In The Shill Spotlight
ICYMI: The Corvette Obsessed Newsletter Archive

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The Corvette Obsessed Newsletter: 10/14/2026

1 — Worse Than The C5 Leaky Butt? Paranoid Owners Frantically Placing Cardboard Under Their LS6-Equipped Corvettes

For decades, Corvette enthusiasts have shared a wry smile over the C5 generation’s notorious “leaky butt” syndrome, where a narrow differential casing lip and hardening factory seals routinely dripped fluid onto garage floors. It became a rite of passage for owners of that era, a quirks-and-all badge of honor in our tight-knit community. Fast forward to today, and history is repeating itself in a brand-new location with the rollout of GM’s heavily anticipated 6.7-liter Gen 6 Small Block. Just as early adopters are taking delivery of the 2027 C8 Stingray and Grand Sport, a newly issued GM service bulletin reveals that the mighty 535-hp LS6 V8 is experiencing its own teething pains—this time leaving its calling card via an engine oil leak from the oil cooler adapter.

The Midnight Oil: Pinpointing the LS6 Puddle

The exact problem centers around a persistent engine oil leak developing right where the engine’s oil pan meets the oil cooler adapter. Fresh off the assembly line, some of these 535-horsepower powerplants are pushing oil past their boundaries, causing fluid to seep or bubble out under pressure and stain clean driveways and garages. Dealership technicians tracking down the source have discovered that unevenly distributed pressure across the adapter face is allowing the lubricant to escape, transforming a high-performance milestone into an unexpected garage-floor cleanup project.

By The Book: GM Deploys Service Bulletin PIP6132

To address the issue, General Motors has officially issued Service Bulletin PIP6132, which outlines a precise diagnostic protocol and repair procedure for dealership service departments. The factory-prescribed fix requires technicians to drop the adapter and completely replace two specialized oil-pan high-pressure port seals. Crucially, the bulletin notes that technicians must tighten the four mounting bolts in a strict, even sequence using a two-stage torque process—first to 5 Nm, then to 15 Nm—to ensure uniform compression of the new rubber and eliminate the leak for good.

♦ Read the full Service Bulletin here

Garage Time vs. Peace of Mind: Don’t Sweat the First-Year Blues

The good news is this isn’t a catastrophic mechanical failure, and a skilled Chevy tech can typically swap the seals and get you back on the road in under two hours. While it is undeniably frustrating to see a pristine, next-generation Corvette dripping fluid so early in its life, early adopters shouldn’t let these first-year teething pains kill their enthusiasm. Pushing the boundaries of automotive engineering with a brand-new Gen 6 Small Block architecture almost always invites minor, real-world calibrations, and GM’s rapid rollout of a definitive service bulletin proves they are already ahead of the curve in keeping your C8 firmly on the asphalt—not the cardboard.

Buy your next LS6-equipped Corvette with confidence! Photo courtesy of MotorTrend

*Additional Sources For This Coverage: GMAuthority, Autoevolution

2 — Rare Corvettes, Family Bonds & A New Way To Experience The NCM

Get ready to go behind the scenes like never before, as the National Corvette Museum prepares to open its brand-new, 66,000-square-foot Collections Facility for public guided tours starting January 13, 2027. This massive expansion brings vehicle preservation, artifact conservation, and secure storage all under one roof, allowing enthusiasts to lay eyes on rare Corvettes from every generation that are normally tucked away from public display. Tickets officially go on sale online via the National Corvette Museum website starting December 1, 2026, and because capacity is limited and all passes must be purchased in advance, you’ll want to move fast to lock in an experience that also includes same-day admission to the main museum.

♦ Your direct NCM link for more details and to secure your tickets!

One of the favorite parts of our NCM coverage is scouring its Facebook page for the most viral and engaging post—fueled by its 306,000+ followers. We especially like today’s post because it illustrates a theme we have covered multiple times—how the Corvette experience helps build family bonds.

♦ From The NCM:

“Special delivery at the National Corvette Museum! After being named our sweepstakes winner last month, Robert Tor of Lemont, Illinois, and his family made the trip to Bowling Green, KY, to pick up his 2012 Corvette ZR1! We love getting to celebrate our sweepstakes winners and see them drive away in their Corvettes! 🤩

Who will be our next ZR1 winner? Our 2026 Corvette ZR1 Sweepstakes is underway, and a 1,064-horsepower Corvette could be yours next. Enter for your chance to win: https://www.corvettemuseum.org/2026-corvette-zr1…/”

♦ The Reactions Tell The Story

1,100+ Reactions
49+ Posts
24+ Shares
Click anywhere on the post to join the fun!

♦ Another Corvette as a catalyst for family time

3 — Another Corvette Lands In The Shill Spotlight

CorvSport was among the national publications that broke the Corvette community’s first story on shill bidding for coveted new variants, exposing the questionable tactics of a Bring a Trailer dealer caught manipulating bids while trying to sell a 2027 Grand Sport. Now, just weeks later, lightning has struck twice. Another Corvette listing has been pulled for shill bidding, this time involving a 2026 ZR1X Stars & Steel Limited Edition 3LZ Coupe. Credit goes to Steve Ensminger, an avid enthusiast and admin of the C8 Corvette, Grand Sport, E-Ray, Z06, and ZR1/ZR1X Facebook page, for bringing this latest listing to our attention. And, as always, we’re bringing the story straight to you. Apparently, someone still hasn’t gotten the memo that Corvette enthusiasts are watching!

♦ The Corvette in the shill spotlight:

Shill Bidding Strikes Again: BaT Shows Its Teeth

For those unfamiliar with the practice, shill bidding occurs when a seller or an affiliated accomplice places artificial bids on their own auction to inflate the apparent demand and drive up the final price. It’s a deceptive game that can trick genuine enthusiasts into chasing a phantom bidding war and paying far more than a vehicle is worth. Beyond being unethical, it undermines the integrity of the collector car market and has absolutely no place in our hobby. Just as it did with the Grand Sport incident, BaT deserves credit for listening to the community, recognizing the pattern, and pulling the plug. The platform swiftly removed the ZR1X listing and stripped the offender’s accounts of the ability to bid, comment, or sell. That’s the kind of accountability the enthusiast community deserves, especially when six-figure collector cars are involved.

♦ The first message:

♦ Then the full unredacted explanation:

$300,000 On The Table, But No Corvette At The Finish Line

Despite showing just 156 miles, this Stars & Steel ZR1X is titled and technically used. That distinction matters because, under GM’s anti-flipping policy, its next owner will not receive a factory warranty. Yet, based on what we’ve observed across these auctions, the absence of warranty coverage doesn’t necessarily scare away buyers with deep enough pockets to chase the latest and greatest from Bowling Green. Case in point: this auction. The final bid before the auction was pulled came from Mrfeatherlite in the early hours of the morning, reaching a substantial $300,000, well past the MSRP of $256,015. That’s a premium of $43,985, or approximately 17.2% above sticker. But by the following afternoon, any hopes Mrfeatherlite had of driving home the ZR1X had been extinguished. We reviewed his full BaT bidding history and found nothing to suggest that he was among the shill bidders. In other words, a legitimate bidder may have been left holding nothing but a canceled auction and a story to tell. It’s another reminder that when artificial bidding enters the picture, even honest participants can become collateral damage.

♦ Welcome to the days of quarter-million-dollar Corvettes.

The Comment Section Drops The Hammer

The BaT community wasted little time delivering its verdict, and some of the sharpest reactions came from members who were now looking back at the seller’s earlier comments with an entirely different perspective. One commenter laughed at the irony of reading the seller’s own auction commentary after learning that he had allegedly been bidding against himself, while another simply declared, “Another crook bites the dust!” and a third summed it up in one word: “greed.” Others applauded BaT for its transparency and enforcement, with one noting that this was the second dealer caught in two weeks and thanking the platform for keeping the site legitimate.

Not everyone was ready to close the book, however. One commenter with a family background in new-car dealerships observed that the car business can be ruthless and suggested there might be more to the story. Meanwhile, another enthusiast offered a potentially encouraging market signal, noting that ZR1s were now selling at MSRP and that some ZR1Xs in the MSRP-and-below group had already sold, even as most examples continued trading above sticker. The commenter warned that buyers who paid inflated premiums could ultimately lose money. Taken together, the reaction points to two important lessons: buyers should never confuse aggressive bidding with genuine market demand, and auction platforms must protect the trust that makes their communities work. The ZR1X may be one of the hottest Corvettes on the planet, but no car is worth sacrificing the integrity of the marketplace. When greed takes the wheel, everybody else risks getting taken for a ride.

♦ The Full 2026 ZR1X Stars & Steel Listing