It’s March 2017: The weather is getting hot and so are the cars in the W&W shop. Last week we had a lot of gloss and a lot of horsepower sitting in the shop. Two C7 Corvettes: one a black convertible and the other a Shark Grey z06.
On the menu for the black C7 convertible was a full-frontal Suntek Ultra clear bra, a full paint correction, a CQuartz Finest nano-ceramic paint coating, wheels pulled and coated, and CQuartz Fabric applied to the cloth top.
The Z06 was more straightforward with full paint correction and CQuartz Finest applied to the wheel faces (it already had Xpel applied to the full front).
First up was the Z06 since it was on a bit of a tighter time schedule than the black C7. While we usually have some insane before and after photos of how beat up the paint was prior to us getting our hands on it, this was not one of those cases!
The owner was very savvy when it came to maintaining his car’s finish—and it really showed when we began work on it.
So, that being said, many of these will be more eye-candy photos than insane before and after photos—but when does Z06 eye candy ever get old?
Up front, however, you see the starting stages of the Vert C7 having Suntek Ultra applied to it. Oh, it looks messy now, but it’ll be a gem soon enough.
A little Photo Grid action here with the C7 getting protected with Suntek Ultra:
Vents pulled—you know it. Badges pulled as well, of course!
While we’ve had a mid-rise lift for quite some time, it was not ideal for all the different types of cars we’d have in and need to put up. Sometimes the arms were too short to reach the proper lift points, and we found ourselves spending as much time setting the car up as we did actually working on the wheels!
Fast forward to now… Meet our new friend, the Quick Jack!
It has two locking lift points, the lowest of which is seen above and the highest of which maxes out at 21.5” (about 1’ higher than seen). With a 7,000 lbs. lifting capacity but super easy functionality (I can easily carry both of these lift rails—they weigh maybe 50 lbs. each) this baby was love at first sight.
At one point, even with 2,500 sq ft, things were a bit snug in the shop.
The C7 was behind me in this photo and in front was the Z06, a Dodge Hellcat (also wearing CQ Finest), an 81’ Z28 Camaro with 5,000 original miles and all matching parts as well as original paint (so sweet!), a Tesla Model S, and a Fiat 124 Spider Abarth. Quite the bit of eye candy, yes, but it did make things pretty cramped up for a while!
Our Hellcat friend was getting some vinyl installed while the Tesla was finishing up getting a full PPF wrap (that’s a lot of film).
Now, this C7, being black, did not quite cooperate as nicely as the Shark Grey. It was swirled, but not the worst that we’d seen. However, we wanted to make sure we cut out everything possible, so we used the same M100/Megs Microfiber Finishing Pad combo. It did cut out the swirls but also left a nice amount of haze that took a little doing to fully remove. Under most any other lighting, it would have looked flawless, but in the light room, very faint marring (which I could not even capture in a photo) was evident and required another final polishing step to fully remove.
Finally, we got to the point where we could erase the paint and start applying CQuartz Finest.
That’s some pretty black paint…just sayin’.
The fun part about these Vettes is the fender wells are carpeted. Traditional scrubbing and power washing don’t really 100 percent clean them. Often, a brush and vacuum are what’s needed to really get these babies clean (as seen here with Mr. Henry working away to get them looking right).
Both Vettes were IR cured after the coating was applied—which always looks cool:
After being pulled and having CQuartz coatings applied to the faces, barrels, and calipers, the C7 wheels were looking stellar. We’ve been spraying on CQuartz Finest for more intricate wheels as of late, and it really does look amazing when finished:
Once we kicked the lights back on, the last thing to do as the coating cured was to apply CQuartz Fabric to the top:
The next morning, when the owner came to pick up, he was quite blown away (which never, ever gets old).
Now our “house policy” is that if you have CQuartz Finest applied to your car, we do the first follow-up wash. While we consider ourselves very good at what we do, when you rack up lots of hours into a job, it’s usually a good idea to lay a fresh set of eyes on the work you did. We also like to inspect to make sure the coating bonded correctly to everything, and lastly, we give our customers a one-on-one lesson on how to best care for their newly protected finish.
