The best thing you can do is to buy the factory shop manual from Helms. For a little over $100 or so, you get the same books that the GM techs use at a dealership. Go to
www.helminc.com and order the set for your year.
For brake components, you can go with drilled/slotted rotors for street use and choose a pad that is low-dusting like a ceramic pad. Ceramic pads are not quite as good as OEM pads when cold but they will last and work fine when hot. If you are hard on brakes, go with generic replacement rotors. For a good street/autocross pad, consider Hawk HPS or EBC GreenStuff pads. Great bite when cold and very good braking once they get hot. They do dust more than stock pads.
This would also be a good time to do a complete fluid flush. The chances are the fluid is either original or old enough that it looks black. You can use a good DOT3 fluid like Castrol LMA, Valvoline SynPower or Ford MotorSports HD fluid. Takes about a quart to do a full flush.
The Corvette brakes are not difficult to do. The front calipers are held in place with a pin and C-clip. Pull the clip, slide the pin out and lift the caliper out and away. For the rears, there are two small bolts that hold the caliper to the guide pins. Remove the bolts and lift off the caliper.
There is a bracket attacked to the knuckles that has to be removed to pull the rotors. There are two large bolts for the front and two smaller bolts for the rears. Torque on the front bolts is 165 ft-lbs and the rears are 70. You will need a good-sized breaker bar or a impact wrench to pull the fronts but the rears are not difficult.
The bracket bolts have a factory applied threadlocker. While the manual says to discard the bolts after removal and use new ones, you can simply clean the threads and apply some Locktite BLUE and re-use them. Same for the guide pin bolts in the rear. Torque the front bracket bolts to 165 +/-15 ft-lbs and the rears to 70. The rear guide pin bolts are torqued to 26 ft-lb for the upper bolt and 16 ft-lb for the lower bolt.
If the hoses are original, consider new hoses while everything is apart. You might also consider "Speed-Bleeders for the calipers to make the job of bleeding brakes a one-man operation. They cost about $15 a pair and well worth it. Go to
www.speedbleeder.com for info. You need p/n SB1010.
Shocks are pretty straight forward. The fronts can even be removed without raising the car. The rear shocks have a mounting plate attached to the underside of the frame rail so you have to pull the rear wheels to get to them. Many people like the KYB Gas-A-Just shock for about $30 at Summit Racing or Jeg's. OEM Bilsteins will run about $70-75 each depending on the vendor.
For the front shock bolts, torque the lower front bolts to 19 ft-lbs, the upper shock nut to 19 ft-lb. For the rears, tighten the upper shock retaining nut to 19 ft-lb, the upper bracket bolts to 22 ft-lbs and the lower mounting nut to 61 ft-lbs. When you tighten the lower shock nut, the suspension must be at ride height, so raise the control arm with a jack until the car just lifts off the jack stand pad.
Like the others said before, it would also be a good time to totally flush the brake system. Wouldn't cost you but a few dollars and a little bit more time.
