2002 Black Corvette Corrected + Optimum Gloss Coat

[The Guz]

I've been lagging on this write up for almost a month now.

The owner of this 2002 Corvette is one of my many uncles (my mom's baby bro). A brief background on the car. He is the second owner and he has had it for roughly 10+ years. I think he bought it in 2003 or 2004. Around 2012-2013 he had the car repainted due to clear coat failure on the rear quarters. The high UV index here in Southern California will do that along with not enough care. Also the scratches his dogs put on the paint. So it was repainted.

He has been asking me to polish it out for quite sometime but our schedules always conflicted with one another. Since he is in the middle of remodeling his garage, he has been storing it at my brothers place. I had my bro bring it by to work on it. I had all the time in the world with this one so I took my time. He's almost finished with his garage so the car will be going home soon.

The paint was in rough shape. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

 

Started off by cleaning the wheels

 

Wheel cleaner doing it's thing on the passenger side front wheel

 

 

Before photo of the front driver side wheel

 

 

After

 

 

Proceeded onto washing the paint. I use the aggressive wash method as described by Mike Phillips in his article (http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/how-articles/86146-aggressive-approach-washing-car.html)

 

Here is my brother foaming up the car using a foam gun

 

 

Once I finished doing the aggressive wash method, it was dried to give me an idea of what I was working with.

 

 

 

The car was pulled into the garage so the paint didn't get to hot from sitting in the sun. The first thing we did was work on the interior. We vacuumed the interior carpets, floor mats as well as clean them, cleaned up the glass and wipedown the interior. The rubber and vinyl dash areas on the door panels and dash were treated with 303 Automotive protectant.

 

The leather was cleaned with leather cleaner and coated with cquartz leather coating.

 

Completed interior

 

 

While I was working on the interior my brother polished the exhaust tips with a fine cut metal polish. I ended up coating the exhaust tips later on. He also dressed up the engine bay. I forgot to mention that my brother cleaned the engine bay while I was cleaning the wheels. It needed it as it had been to Arizona a few times when his wife was in the military.

 

This is what the engine bay looked like upon arriving

 

 

This is what it looked like after using Blackfire All In One Trim & Tire Protectant

 

 

My uncles rinsed the car with water and let it dry just like that. There was severe water spots on the glass and taillights. Some M101 compound on a cutting pad and a DA took care of them.

 

 

 

Up next was the test spot. Started off with M205 on a polishing pad using my Rupes LHR15 Mark II. That did ok but I needed to get more aggressive and move up to a compound and a cutting pad. I ended up correcting the paint with Meguiar's D300 correction compound on a Griot's Boss microfiber cutting pad. The compound is low dusting and it does the work quick. For smaller areas I used my Rupes mini with a 3" Lake Country flat foam cutting pad.

 

Here are a couple before and afters

 

 

 

Nano getting into those edges

 

 

The passenger side rear quarter

 

 

 

Once I finished compounding the car, I removed each taillight and polished them out to remove the water spots on them

 

 

 

After the paint was compounded I polished it with Rupes Keramik fine polish. I followed up with an ONR wash to remove any compounding and polishing dust. There was very little from both products. I followed that up with couple wipedowns of Optimum Paint Prep to prep the paint for Gloss Coat.

 

I didn't get too many photos during the polishing phase. Here's one of the Nano in action

 

 

Temp stats. The humidity was higher than normal this day. Gloss Coat flashed a bit quicker than normal but was not an issue

 

 

 

 

Gloss Coat Flashing

 

 

Great gloss after the first coat

 

 

While I was waiting for to apply the second coat I coated the exhaust tips and the face of the wheels. He will be getting new wheels at a later time so I didn't coat the barrles

 

 

Polishing the wheels with the Rupes Nano

 

 

 

Final results after 2 coats of Gloss Coat and 1 Coat of Opti Seal

 

 

 

He received his new plates

 

 

 

 

 

 

Night and day difference

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

[The Guz]

Walk around video

 

[A&J]

Stunning work...great job.

[The Guz]

Stunning work...great job.

 

Thanks.

[The Guz]

Well it was time to do some coating upkeep.  Some minor/slight swirling has developed on some of the coating. 

I ended up using CarPro Essence Plus to "repair" the coating.  For those that are not familiar with the product, this fills in the minor defects and deposits a layer of SiO2.  It is a non-abrasive jeweling polish. 

 

Topped it off with an SiO2 sealant. 

 

There will be a few folks who say gloss coat does not need a topper and Optimum states the same thing.  But in my experience and in my opinion gloss coat needs some sort of rejuvenation type product  to maintain it.   Other choose to use opti-seal.  To put it best, frequent car care is easy car care. 

One thing is certain, the gloss is amazing.  The defects have been filled until it is time to re-polish and re-coat. 

 

[boiler]

Hard to argue with that gloss!

[The Guz]

I forgot to update this thread as well.  But the vette was polished and re-coated back in November of 2017.  Gloss Coat did a better job on this one given that it spends most of it's time in the garage.  There was marring that needed to be addressed.  It was re-coated in another manufacturers coating.