EVIL Black ZL1 - Repaint - Orange Peel/Sanding Marks/Hologram Removal & CQuartz Finest

Wills.WindowsAndWheels

Wills.WindowsAndWheels

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THE NAME....people....said it ALL...




About 3 weeks ago while working on ANOTHER black 2013 ZL1 - I checked my phone and saw i had 2 calls from the same #. I though dang, someone wants to talk to me. Then I got another call at that same instant....I picked up and after introducing himself...and telling me he has a Black ZL1 Camaro ...he went on to say "I was told if anyone can save my car it's you guys"

...Yeah no pressure!

The owner went on to tell me that with under 3k miles...that his whole front bumper and the pop outs of the rear quarter panels (the ribbed areas) were covered with 100's of chips. This didn't surprise me since this paint seemed EXTRA soft (we found that out from the one we were currently working on at the time!) So, under warranty he had the front bumper and the sides (Front QP, doors, Rear QP...basically everything but the hood/roof/trunk) repainted.





Yes....repainted







Repainted cars are notorious for a few things....especially black ones...






Yeah...holograms...buffing trails....wool pad marks















These guys were thorough. Not only did they buff the repainted areas..they buffed the WHOLE DAMN CAR.

Ok, ok....thats not really true. See they did manage to actually MISS some areas completely and just leave the sanding marks there instead:






I mean really....whats a few sanding marks going to do...no big deal right?








You can only see it in the light...who cares about that!









The owner was probably just "one of those people"...you know...picky ones who want everything perfect. What nut would be worried about this on his car...i mean it's black after all and black just CANT be polished right?






They did a little art work....rotary buffer ghost flames:






By the way i lied.....they didnt just leave buffer marks...or sanding marks where they DIDNT buff...some spots well...they just didn't even sand.
"Didn't sand?" you might think...."Like what?"

Well...kinda like this drip right here:





I know i know...its just a little drip...hard to see. But you may notice a certain...reflection...or lack there of...around that drip. You know...a little peely peel if you will:





Ok maybe more than a little...maybe more like the whole area infront of the wheels on the bumper:





Do the wave!!!






*Sigh*...ok i'm having flash backs going through these pics...not good ones either. Anyway...back to my story. So...what the owner wanted to know was...could we save his car. Could we get it back to at least OEM condition. My reaction was...let us look at it first. We'll be straight with you..tell you what CAN be done...and what CANT be done. That's exactly what he wanted to hear...we spoke a bit more...he expressed in a pretty detailed fashion how displeased he was...then we hung up and i told him I'd be in touch.

But wait, remember those other 2 calls? Well...that was from a guy at the dealership...calling about the same car. This guy tried everything he could to get his guys to do the right thing with the paint job...he knew it wasn't right...he knew the owner wasn't going to be happy with it....but you can't do what you don't know...and these guys didn't know how to finish paint (or sand some of it either for that matter).

I spoke with him for a bit...we agreed to the same thing, Dani and I would go check it out, find out if it was doable or not...and then go from there.

After checking out the car...we called the owner...told him most of it we could fix, the exception being...some very small fish eyes we found here n' there. But the rest....we believed we could save...with the exception of ONE area....that damn front bumper I mentioned earlier. THAT...was our main question.

I told him when we first walked up that "We walked up to the bumper and put our light on it and we were like, is it even..." The owner ....in perfect harmony with me said "Even black!!!"

Yes, we weren't sure if it was even black lol. Why? Well cause it looked like this...








No this was not just a little road dirt...this was in the paint. We tried washing, clay barring and even compounding...it said nuh-uh. Not to mention the fact that it had the reflection of old asphalt. We hoped we could save it, but wouldn't know until we gave it a shot.


We arranged a drop off time and set aside from Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon for this car...it was going to be...a #####...period.


What to do in a situation like this? Well, you call the man himself, Mr Buff Daddy Buff Daddy - Kevin Brown. I spoke with kev a few times (once we finally quit playing phone tag!) He told me he'd send me all the discs i needed...gave me some advice on how best to use them and said anything i don't use just send back. His advice was greatly appreciated AND used...so just a quick shout out to him for this. Both before and during the detail..he was on standby for us if we had any questions/concerns. Which I did in a couple of circumstances...and he was there to help us out whenever needed.

The day before drop off...we received a package that was enough to "Totally sand down 2 full Corvettes!" as he put it lol. And it was!

But before we could get to that fun stuff...we had some clean up to do....there were also some water spots left all over...but not on the paint:








Yeah all these TIGHT little vents were covered in hard water spots.






The back had the same deal:





I lied, they left some on the paint too...cause its hard to pop the trunk and just wipe under the spoiler edge:




Little compound dust here n' there along with some good stuff caked deep into some body lines:






And of course the usual dirty exhaust tips...this thing IS a Super Charged ZL1 after all...and is pushing 715 HP from what the owner told me so...yeah..this is kind of expected lol:





Now first thing was first on this thing...washing it and removing any fillers. Yeah those pics above....are PRE-WASH. We pre-sprayed each panel with Power Clean though and it removed anything on the paint quite easily. Next up...the owner asked if we would mind removing the badges for him as well...so thats what we did:




Well Dani mostly did lol...I did a couple.

 
After they were off...it was time to pull it into the garage and get some spots off the plastic...again...Dani worked her magic...one vent at a time:









I went around and clayed everything to make sure any bodyshop dust was removed. By the time i was done Dani was onto another task...



Still the vents...but, she started taping them up to be sure nothing more got on them during the next couple of days while we worked ourselves nearly to death:




While Dani was working along doing that fun stuff...i needed to at least get an idea of how damn finicky the paint was. The last ZL1 we did was a NIGHTMARE...just wiping polish off caused an insane amount of towel marring...with THIS ZL1 we had two different types of paint...fun!


As stated before...they buffed the whole car...so even the OEM painted hood looked like this:




After working with our Rupes (thx again Kevin) along with some 105 and MF cutting disc...I was able to knock out most everything.





Again this:






Was turning into this:





And Dani was taping still...








Since i had a bit of relief knowing the OEM paint was going to at least CUT without too much fuss...i jumped back to help her finish up the plastic. She had most of it done...all that was left was the very bottom vents on the front bumper:




She had been using Final Inspection to clean most of it up...and it worked great. But of course when I tried it..it left some crap behind...guess i got the extra hard stuff that dripped all the way to the bottom -_- . So i i grabbed a little distilled vinegar and a microfiber towel and did a test spot....it took the spots out relatively easily (other than the insane amount of tight areas we had to work) and didn't dull the plastic at all:




After that was done...Dani was able to ...well...tape some more!




We were able to get the drivers side hood, roof and trunk CUT at least during the rest of that night. Then we tucked her in...covered the top panels up with soft sheets to be sure as little dust as possible settled on it over night..and went to get some rest before getting up early to start the next morning.

Oh yeah...there was one other little X Factor...we live in Arizona. So? So...that means even after the sun is DOWN...we still have this:





Yes...it was 8:30 and 108 degrees outside still...we were going to get up in the MORNING...and go into our easy bake oven (the garage)...with doors closed up and no AC...to work for 12 hours straight...great way to spend your Saturday!


Up and at it...thats what we were at 7-somethin in the morning. First up...that damn orange peel on the drivers side. I'd be working this...while Dani went on to compound the areas she was able to that didn't need sanding.

As i said earlier..the worst area...was the front bumper ...and the front half of the quarter panels...as you can see here just above the bumper on the QP...it was nice and bumpy:





Solution? Sand that sucker down. I started out easy by hand in this area just to get a feel for the paint ...2500...took a bit of time but, did the job:




Then moved my way up to the exceptionally bumpy quarter panel. Workin the peel away:




After getting it to a state to where i felt it was as even as possible (was a bit odd, didn't wanna go totally flat since the OEM paint was NOT flat...but obviously didn't want to leave it in the condition it was in...the real odd part was THEY had made certain areas totally flat...so we just had to use our best judgement for each area to try to make it look as even as possible) i compounded an area and well..it came out very well...and shiny :



Left was done....right was not.


And after some more compounding:




The quarter panel was coming out well.....the reflection was back..no more peel....it was just a matter of chasing down any left over sanding marks. There weren't a ton...but wanted to be sure all were removed.

Other areas were also sanded down where needed...again..just trying our best to make the car look as uniform as possible texture wise.







The hard stuff was the small..tight areas....which they obviously avoided in most cases. And if the did sand it...they didnt buff it....as I'm sure they didn't want to burn any edges. So we had to go in and refine that too:





Dani worked behind me, refining it down. The girl is bad ass..just sayin'






While she was working down my sanding marks...well...i was running into some of my own...left by them. Again...right near edges where the paint is thinner







I did however find a few tricks as i went along...you see some areas...like that front bumper....was very hard to compound right on the edge where it met with the plastic fender piece...the reason was my backing plate would just touch the plastic...which is a no-go:




What to do? Well...Kev sent this little foam interface for the 3" discs....I however found it to be quite useful for compounding in this instant...to sort of serve as a type of washer/spacer between my backing plate and the trim piece:











Ahhh...success. Even with this though...there was literally about 1/8" i didnt quite get:




So...i used the oldest tool known to man

 
Bingo...






Compounding haze had to be removed...but the sanding marks were gone.



And for that old drip...i was able to almost completely knock it down...you had to get right ontop of it to see it...but this was as far as i felt comfortable going with it:





We worked and worked and worked through the day. Where normally we'd be making faster pace..things like deep sanding marks in tight groves or on sharp body lines took us extra time. Rather slow and successful than fast and a failure.

Finally reaching towards the back...it was time to cut under the spoiler...cause yes...even UNDER the spoiler itself needed work...we were able to get it into good shape too:




At this point...we were reaching exhaustion. Officially starting to WORK a little after 8 a.m and only pausing for drinks and then 20 minutes to go in and have "breakfast" at noon lol...we were running off our 5th wind and decided to call it a night around 10 p.m

Dani was hanging in till the very end....i couldn't get a good angle on that spoiler...so she had to hold it in place while i was cutting it. She wasn't asleep...jump blinking during the pic lol..but yea, we were both pretty tired:





So what do you do after a long days work? You wake up early again and put in even MORE hours the next day! On to the other side...more sanding and the compounding...i had to work the rotary on some spots:







And again...had to work the very slightest of edges by hand:








While i was doing that...Dani went around to do a thorough clean on the wheels/wheel wells to prep them for DLux coating...but she ran into a little problem:













Bodyshop dust and/or over spray had covered the wheels..especially on the passenger side. For this we decided it had to take a back seat for now because we NEEDED to get this paint DONE. So they were cleaned...tires were dressed...but no coating on the wheels for now..the owner will return for us to remove the over spray and get them coated.



I moved my way to the front bumper...this was the most damned area of the whole car...the big question mark we had in the back of our minds was finally about to be addressed:







Could we remove this speckled mess? There was only one way to find out...


I did a test spot...went for 1500 right off cause anything finer just wasn't going to do it in a timely manner. The followed it up with some 3000 Megs Unigrit to refine it down. Again..slow and easy was the pace...i cut the test area...it looked good...REAL good. Peel, dust specks...all removed...there was REFLECTION!

So, i continued on, leveling, refining...and cutting. Here was half the bumper sanded still...but the other half had been compounded...look...gloss:






And reflection...nice crisp reflection:




Things were going pretty good! It was super time consuming because i had to sand that bumper area ALL the way down to the very bottom parts where it met the plastic nose piece...but i did it...and then had the fun of removing the sanding marks...but did that too..and it was coming out awesome.

Dani was busting her butt on the passenger side, compounding it like she had the drivers side the day before. After i finished up my bumper duties, i hopped up top to work the roof of the passenger side:







And as we continued, we KEPT running into these damn things. MORE sanding marks/pig tails left from the dealership...and where? Right in the hardest damn places to cut them out. Like...in the grove where the hip meets the vertical panel:







God thats ugly...



But, we pushed through...and finally got to the point of polishing. We went through...and did a final polish on the whole car. These damn cars a big...lots of paint..plenty of odd sharp angles to try to get a pad into ...and...its black.

That night we go to the point of prepping the paint for CQuartz Finest. We had applied it on Dani's car a week prior and well...it looked AWESOME. So this ZL1 was going to get the same treatment.

The hard part? Well..the OEM paint was VERY finicky ...even when using Eraser to remove the oils...one bad wipe...one piece of whatever caught in your towel..and it was towel marring city. The other thing we found was...in a couple of very small spots on a few panels..there was light micro-marring left over that we had missed. Whats that mean? We polish it again...even if it IS 10 p.m and we've been going at it over 12 hours a











Dani said i looked like a deer in headlights here...




Touching up my half of the roof too:




Gotta realize, polishing the defects is only part of the battle....SEEING them..especially super faint micro-marring...is the other part.


Carefully wiping down with Eraser:




Yeah it was pushing 11 P.M now...we had killed the fans in the garage because we wanted NO dust on the car when it got time to coat...can you tell i was sweating?





Now it was time....





Honestly at that point in time when i got the box...the two blue swooshes in the upper right hand corner looked like more holograms to me...i was a little loopy and tired at that point lol..but we had to coat it!

To apply the coating it took about 50 minutes. I try to be super thorough and EVEN when coating...first you go across the paint...then you go again in the direction you want the water to flow (WITH the direction of the car basically)...then you let the coating sit:




It looks kinda streaky/rainbow-ish ...but its the icing on the cake once its removed.

I continued along:

 






Dani stuck right by my side the whole time. She would position the lights where i needed them and then she would go and coat the tight areas (behind the side mirrors, under door handles etc.)

After the 50 minutes it took to apply it was still a BIT wet...so we let it set 10 more...then began removing. Then guess what? We had to apply a SECOND coat...so the process started all over again. After removing the 2nd coat...it was about 2:15 in the morning. But the paint was DONE and DAMN did it look good sitting in the garage.

We had used basically every drop:



We put it to bed again....and go up the next morning to do the finishing touches....door jambs...engine...trim with DLux...and yes...pictures!

Remember those tiny ass vents? Well those had to be gone through AGAIN to coat with DLux:




These little foam sticks Corey supplies ( CarPro USA) are perfect for this.


New trim...what could DLux possibly do? Welll....quite a lot actually...it made it even DARKER:








Dani cleaned the jambs and did a quick interior...with nothing left to do well...she did what anyone else would do after over 35 hours she alone had spent working.....she cleaned the water spots off of our family members Navigator:




HAH! Crazy! Glutton for punishment...OCD...ADD...whatever...thats what she was doin' though for real!

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for...after pics:




This car...this car right here! This car looked....freaking....amazing....










The EVLZL1 had returned:





Tips were nice and clean and shiny...along with the clean plastic that was coated and protected with DLux:








And the gloss was INSANE:









NASTY!:






Wheels, while they did look filthy like this:




Cleaned up to this (and will be even better once they are polished)







And as for that horrible orange peel:





All gone:







 




And those insane sanding marks:




Were a thing of the past:




The nasty water spotted plastic:




Was cleaned and coated with DLux...every inch:














And that hideous bumper:








Had as much gloss as any spot on the car:





Holograms were a thing of the past:


















Lastly..some beauty shots. Gloss...this damn car HAS some gloss people...and looks as good in shade as it does in light...hope you enjoy this:

















Dani made me hold still:








 
I LOVE this shot:









Ready and waiting for pick up.


In short...the owner...was very pleased and somewhat surprised with the turn around lol. This car had turned around even in ways we were unsure of...but after a serious marathon of not just detailing...but renovation of this brand new car...in some insane heat...it came out gorgeous.

I know...this was a long write up...but it was a LONGER 4 days...and i wanted to give this job its just due after all we put into it. I hope you all enjoyed it and maybe even learned a thing or two along the way.

Thanks again for reading/looking..take care all.
 
Sucks a brand new paint job came like that from the factory!

Sent from my SPH-M930 using AG Online
 
Klasse Act said:
Sucks a brand new paint job came like that from the factory!

Sent from my SPH-M930 using AG Online
Click to expand...

Well, not really...if you read it, i say that the front and sides were all repainted at the dealership, not the factory. Then they buffed it and WOW...

cartman57 said:
Unbelievable job and results!
Stunning work.
Click to expand...

Thank you...and sorry for the pics doubling up in some spots, not sure what happened...Photobucket fail!
 
That may well be the most awesome write-up I've ever enjoyed. Absolutely amazing. Kudos x1,000!
 
What a read that was. Had me on the edge of my seat for sure. I enjoyed the write up and the pictures to finish off the job. Very well done.

I dont know how you guys work in that heat. I cant do it here in Vegas when it gets that hot.
 
Wow, amazing save on a nightmare of sloppy body shop work.
 
awesome job on the car! Looking at each of the before-pictures was like taking a kidney shot for each picture.

Glad to see that you could save the car's paint!
 
Holy $&:). That's what I call a turnaround for sure. Amazing results. The time invested in the write up, posting the pictures, and working on the car must have been hours. I always enjoy reading your post and dialogue with the jokes. You guys do amazing work. Thanks for sharing as this is much appreciated. People should actually read the whole post and not skim. Just my 2 cents. Amazing work once again, that is one badass ride and resurrection indeed.
 
I enjoyed that very much. One question, have you considered cutting a hole in the garage wall to put in some AC? or one of the stand alone units? I think you would give yourself a much better work environment. You can put filter material over the output vents to reduce containments. Just a thought. You guys make a great team from what I can tell. I hope the owner compensated you very well for all that work!
 
Outstanding and well written, thank you for taking the time!
 
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