Presidential Detailed: 2008 Corvette Z06

Well, I had a great thread planned out for this detail since I learned so much in the process of this detail but I loaded all of my process/before pictures onto my pc to make room for more pictures and my PC crashed and I lost EVERYTHING. Lucky I still had the second half of the pictures on my cameras memory card. So there will only be afters in the post.

This was my first corvette(the clearcoat horror stories are true BTW ) and of course it was black and literally brand new with less than 200 miles on it. Thanks to Kevin Brown, Joshvette, and Aaron from AC Detail I got this sucker done, it took forever and a day I think mostly due to my own mistakes. Mistakes your asking? Dont worry, I didnt mess anything up! The car looked relatively good for what it was, but there were some deeper swirls that needed to come out to get this car looking 100%.

My mistake was going too aggressive with too high of speed, eliminating the swirls I was after, but now I had instilled my own wool marring that I chased for days on end! Just out of the blue Kevin Brown happened to message me, and see how I was enjoying M105 and if I had been using his process, and I reluctantly told him that I hadn't(dont ask me why not, I guess I thought hard clear-high speed/aggressive polish). So after talking with Kevin Brown for hours and hours over the week, we got the Corvette back into shape!

Just to clear things up, I did try less aggressive products which did not remove the defects I was looking for. I ended up going to M105/Burgandy Wool at 1500-1800 rpm with no priming like Kevin recommends. This removed the deep swirls I was after, however it left some wool marring that was VERY difficult to remove. After talking with Kevin for hours, I ended up going over the car with M105 on Meguiars new Burgandy Foam 2.0 pad, this pad is incredible! Ill be buying many more to come! Anyways, this step did its job using the Kevin Brown method(pad prime, bead on panel, 1-1200rpms) and had the car glowing, but in direct sunlight it still had very obvious buffer trails as expected and some fine micro-marring from the pad. I then went around the car again with SIP/White and we were CLOSER, but still holograms. I then went around the car with 3m Ultrafina on a UK 3m finishing pad. The end result, PERFECTION!

After several days on end thinking I will never finish this car, I was amazed when I pulled it back out in the sun. There were ZERO swirls in the car and the depth and reflectivity were outstanding. The owner was also very pleased, and we scheduled his 08 STI(teasers later).

The car was topped with two coats of Opti-Seal and then two coats of P21S 100% Past Wax. The wheels were also polished with Adams Metal Polish and then sealed with two coats of Opti-Seal as well. Enough talking! Heres the finished product!

PS. I saved the best pics for last!

I saved the best for last, the ones we all want to see. FULL SUN!





















This one is next! 2008 STI, a hack detailer got ahold of this one for sure! :wall :buffing:

Looks good Billy, are you good at polishing billet wheels?

I hate doing it, haha, but it can be done!