First of the Last: VIN #00001 2010 Viper SRT-10 paint perfected by AutoLavish

MarcHarris

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/\ not my hand!





This is the first 2010 Model Year production Viper off the assembly line. 2010 is the last year of production for the Viper, which is scheduled to cease after 18 years of continuous production.



This last version of the Viper has a bunch of improvements over previous generations in appearance as it is the year with most available combinations on colors and options. Although these are very raw cars to drive this one looks quite elegant with the Gentleman's British Racing Green paint and cream-colored leather interior. Speaking of which, these seats are MUCH better than any previous Viper seats I have had the pleasure to sit in. Better fit, better leather, and better finish.



A Quality Manager for the Viper program, a good client of ours, contacted us to give this car a "quick cleanup" before it went to the press and periodicals for the typical abuse and evaluation. It had under 2000 miles, so was "in great shape".



The Viper was dropped of at our location for the service. Although the car wore no camouflage (most pre-production vehicles sport some sort of trickery to hide the new features from the public eye), the vehicle had to be parked in an enclosed garage overnight. It was cold as heck outside, but this was no problem; we would work completely inside Jacob's heated garage.



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I drool:



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The real deal!



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These things are, basically, hand painted. The paint had only a few slight imperfections, with an overall outstanding job with lots of metallic flake. But it definitely needed a proper wash and polish. There were some RIDS and a few swirl marks. The RIDS required some compounding, but after all the work the clarity of the paint came though and looked outstanding.



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The cleaning begins with the wheels. Here we use Chemical Guys Diablo Gel at a 3:1 dilution ratio to get the wheels and brake components up to speed:



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Jacob starts with the thorough initial decontamination. The includes a pre-foaming, rinse, foaming, wash, rinse, and then refoaming to use the diluted car wash shampoo as clay lube.



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The cloth top required no real effort still being new wearing the OEM protection from Magna. After the wash, we masked up the convertible top and other sensitive areas prior to polishing. A soft cotton blanket and some tape made it quick and easy to cover the entire top.



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Test section masked off to find the best method/product mix for the specific vehicle:



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Yep, looking better: clarity, depth, and shine all coming through. You might be able to make out horizontal lines running with the panel gap that are under the clear-coat. This was one of the only sections we saw any defects beyond repair by polishing on this car as they were installed in the original painting process and can not be taken out. Low volume production can often lead to little odities that owners usually look at as unique aspects to a car.



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Refining the finish after correction using a soft foam pad at high speed and very light pressure:



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After polishing and prior to sealing, we wash one last time to remove any dust, oils, and polish residue from the broken down polishes, and to remove any excess polish still in the cracks and crevices between body panels:



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Sealing the finish was done via Dual Action machine with Blackfire Wet Diamond Paint Sealant. This is a wide hood! Jacob had to Tai-Chi his way to the middle:



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And now for some “afters." Jacob made the call to the client to let him know the vehicle was ready for pickup. He insisted we drive it down the road to take a few pictures outside. After the arm-twisting, Jacob said “OK, I’ll drive it�.



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A couple of the few RIDs that remained. It seemed someone was doing too much leaning on the car...

On the lower portion of the panel, the nicks in paint are reflections of the metallic flake, not defects.



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… the client confirming our location to meet us there, a whopping ¼ mile from Jacob's house. Here Jacob gets his VIP look on.



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The camera was on manual adjustment from trying to capture defects and after shots, but I did not notice, so most our afters turned out overexposed. So here are the best of the pack, sorry for not having many more :(



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Steven Pham showed up to take some shots too. Here he is setting up:



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Steven's pics:



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... and thank you for reading!



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Marc, this is a old write up right? you do not have snow this early......anyway the car looks tight and I hope somehow the Viper can survive.
 
Great work Marc and Jacob! I'm hoping Chad and Bob are correct about the weather. It will be in the high 80s, low 90s here for another week.



Saleen had done the paint work on all of the latest gen of Vipers. After all of the wetsanding they did, there is very little orange peel left. It appears they did a much better job of polishing out most if not all of the pigtails and sanding marks, compared to the few ACRs that I have worked on.
 
RaskyR1 said:
Great work as always guys!

Been sitting on this one for a while? :D



To say the least. We had several major delays with posting this. First off, when we did it, the 2010 Viper wasn't even announced - noone knew if they were going to be making it or not. So the first issue is we had to wait for Dodge to let people know this car was going to exist.

The second and longest part was issues with testing. Turns out they hadn't done all their final wind tunnel testing with this model and the aero package that is on it. Once we detailed it, they had it back in the wind tunnel the next week. Turns out people weren't happy their testing numbers got all thrown off because drag went WAY down compared to where it was supposed to be. While we laughed - we also had to wait for the situation to settle down. By the time the coast was clear, we had some other cool cars to post and this Viper got pushed to the side.



Auto Concierge said:
Marc, this is a old write up right? you do not have snow this early......anyway the car looks tight and I hope somehow the Viper can survive.



Sure is Bob! Thanks for the kind words and I look forward to seeing what nastiness you have waiting to go up next!



gmblack3a said:
Great work Marc and Jacob! I'm hoping Chad and Bob are correct about the weather. It will be in the high 80s, low 90s here for another week.

Saleen had done the paint work on all of the latest gen of Vipers. After all of the wetsanding they did, there is very little orange peel left. It appears they did a much better job of polishing out most if not all of the pigtails and sanding marks, compared to the few ACRs that I have worked on.



There were some paint defects, but they were more painting defects than defects in the paint. Not a lot of holograms or pig tails, but was easy to see it wasn't a multi-million dollar robot with tight quality control doing the painting. Hope all is well with you kind sir and thanks for the pleasant words :)



JohnKleven said:
Nice work. That thing was rough.



Sure was nasty looking. Thanks a lot John and it seems you've been posting up some AMAZING rides recently. Hope all is continuing to go well.



gofast908z said:
Thats beautiful. I love the color. Superb work!



Much appreciated Jeff!
 
Awsome work guys on a very special Viper. I remember you telling me about this one. Will this car eventually be sold retail or will it be destroyed?
 
Another great contribution to the detailing community by AutoLavish. I look toward to many more great write ups! Congrats gentleman on another perfect performance.
 
David Fermani said:
Awsome work guys on a very special Viper. I remember you telling me about this one. Will this car eventually be sold retail or will it be destroyed?



I believe it was sold, and if not, was used for further testing. Now there's word on a next gen Viper in the works...



Barry Theal said:
Another great contribution to the detailing community by AutoLavish. I look toward to many more great write ups! Congrats gentleman on another perfect performance.



Much appreciated Barry... you know we have some more stuff coming soon ;)
 
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