Popped my Vette cherry

tssdetailing

New member
Some of you might know that I have a HUGE adoration for the C6; well I finally had the pleasure of restoring one this week. After what seemed like 3 weeks of rain here in Cincinnati, the perfect day came to polish this gorgeous 08 Black/Red Corvette. The car has 20k miles on it and was recently purchased by the current owner a few months ago. He bought a big bucket of toys from Zaino and had ts|s do the correction work so that he could apply the glossing products to a perfect surface. Upon first look, the car was in good shape. After a thorough bathing and degreasing, I noted the hood and trunk deck had some light water spotting, there were also some deep RIDs which would need wet sanding.



Process:

Degreased rims with Grime Reaper 6:1 using multiple hand brushes to clear out the brake dust on the calipers. Clayed the spokes to remove anything embedded in the clear coat.

Foam bath for the body

Medium Clay bar (very clean paint, hardly picked up anything)

Foam bath again and rinsed down

Ate lunch. It was good, had a ham sammich and some grapes. :clap2:



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After lunch i taped up all the trim and emblems, then did some intial polish passes with the Flex. I hoped that the lightly swirled paint would restore in one-step, so I tried an H20 pad/M105. This didn't cut enough, so then I grabbed D300/MF and tested a spot. I was surprized it left micro marring on the hard GM paint, perhaps the sun softened it a bit? So I figured since I was gonna need 2 steps I might as well go all in and grabbed a purple foam wool pad and 105, followed by the tang pad and 205. This has been a great combo on many GM cars I've done, so it makes sense that it would work here. For the few spots that needed sanding, I used 1500 paper followed by trizact 3000 disc. The PFW/105 combo dusted up A LOT so after the first pass was finished I foamed the car down and washed it. After the tang/205 and multiple IPA wipe downs I layered on a coat of Blackfire Wet Diamond. Oh she looked good in the afternoon sun and was very difficult to walk away from-even harder to turn the keys over!





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the front was plagued with pitting-perhaps he'll agree to a wet sanding next year.
 
Nice job, looks terrific!



C6 Corvettes are so hit and miss, paint hardness is all over the map on them. Wish the paint was as consistent as Mercedes ceramiclear.
 
Scottwax said:
Nice job, looks terrific!



C6 Corvettes are so hit and miss, paint hardness is all over the map on them. Wish the paint was as consistent as Mercedes ceramiclear.



Agreed; and the strange part is that C5 paint was always pretty consistent. I don't get what changed on the C6.
 
Scottwax said:
Nice job, looks terrific!



C6 Corvettes are so hit and miss, paint hardness is all over the map on them. Wish the paint was as consistent as Mercedes ceramiclear.



Agreed, some days you get one that finishes nicely and other days you get one that just mars like a motherf**** form just looking at it, but is impossible to finish down.



tssdetailing said:
interesting-you mean color to color or panel to panel?



I think they mean car by car. Thats what I've experienced. Although at lot of the lightly used vette's that I've gotten straight from the dealer, it has been panel by panel. A lot of the previous owners liked to rip off the front ends over speed bumps, pot holes.. etc. Same with the rocker panes, front quarters, and read end. :evil11::evil11:



Awesome job! Glad you enjoyed the GM paint!
 
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