2003 50th Anniversary Corvette

The owner of this Corvette contacted me after seeing pictures from the previous 50th Anniversary I worked on. He had just purchased the car and was looking to have the car gone over and returned to be best condition possible. I originally had looked at this car the previous fall but was decided to wait until spring to work on the car. We had decided on a Premium Wheels off Service along with a Leather Coating to keep the light colored seats protected and safe.

Before Photos

The car was quite dirty when it was dropped off and was in need of a very thorough wash.

The Borla performance exhaust on the car, which sounded amazing had quite a bit of carbon built up on the tips.

Dirt and other road debris built up behind the rear tires.

Same dirt build up behind the driver side rear.

The chrome wheels were quite dirty with a good amount of brake dust on the surfaces and barrels.

Wash Process

As always, I started with the wheels in the cleaning process. Not a lot of time was spent on the wheels at this time as they would be pulled off the car later on for a more thorough cleaning.

Once the wheels were cleaned the convertible top was cleaned with a fabric top cleaner to remove some minor staining and restore the natural color.

With the top cleaned the car was placed on lifts and treated to strong foam pre-soak to strip the surface cleanof any prior protection that might have been on the car. After dwelling for a few minutes the car was rinsed before receiving a 2 bucket method wash.

Once the paint was cleaned I moved my attention onto cleaning up the exhaust tips. The tips on the left had been cleaned, while the ones on the right still have the carbon build up on them.

I also cleaned the wheel wells up at this point.

Paint Correction Process

Once the car was fulled cleaned and dried, it was pulled into the garage and the wheels were removed.

The tail lights were removed so that these area could be polished, and other areas were taped off prior to starting the compounding process.

This is a picture of the test spot that I tried on the front of the hood. You will notice that there was quite heavy swirling on the hood, which was removed during the compounding process just to the right of the headlight door.

A few different machines and pad sizes were used while working on the hood. In this picture I am using my Rupes 15 mkII during the compounding stage of the paint correction.

This is a 50/50 shot of the driver side rear quarter.

With the swirls no longer on the surface the metallic in the paint was really coming to life.

This is a before photo of the driver side mirror.

The same mirror after being compounded to remove the swirling and restore a glossy finish.

Before photo of the passenger side fender with swirling and fine scratches.

Passenger fender after being compounded.

Passenger rear quarter before correction.

Rear quarter panel after being compounded.

Once the entire car was compounded, the next step in the correction process was the polishing phase. The entire car was gone over with a high gloss enhancing polish prior to the application of the coating.

Wheel Cleaning

At this point in time the wheels were going to receive a very thorough cleaning. As shown in the picture above there was a lot of brake dust baked onto the barrels of these wheels. The chrome on a few of the wheels is actually failing due lack of cleaning and protection.