A Tale of Two Stingrays - Shark Grey Z06 and Black C7 Convertible - Correction / CQuartz Finest / Wheels Pulls / Suntek Ultra PPF

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 horse power sitting in the shop. Two C7 Corvettes – one a black convertible and the other a Shark Grey z06.

I don’t care who you are – getting to come to work and see that sitting in your garage never gets old!

On the menu for the black C7 convertible was full frontal Suntek Ultra clear bra, full paint correction, CQuartz Finest nano-ceramic paint coating, wheels pulled and coated and CQuartz Fabric applied to the cloth top.

For the Z06 – more straight forward 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 usually we 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 cars 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’s, but when does Z06 eye candy ever get old !
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Here she is getting pampered with a foam bath by big Noah with Iron-X Snow Foam prior to us pulling her in and claying her.

In the background you can see the z06 in the beginning stages of correction. Meguiars M100 and a microfiber finishing pad on the Rupes MK 21 and ES 21 were seriously slaying the swirls. Followed up with CarPro’s Essence on a green Buff n’ Shine pad…it was beginning to glow.

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:
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Vents pulled – you know it. Badges pulled as well….of course!

Eventually the rolls were reversed and the z06 was brought back out into the main garage to receive its CQuartz Finest treatment, while the black C7 was pulled into the polishing bay for it’s turn under the Rupes…you may notice something else kinda cool in the back though as well:

Easy enough to see the wheels are pulled, but whats holding the C7 up is our newest addition to the shop!

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 to 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…our new friend, the Quick Jack!
It has two locking lift points – the lowest of which is seen above and the highest of which maxing 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 sqft…things were a bit snug in the shop.

The C7 was behind me in this photo and in front, 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 eraser 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. A traditional scrubbing and power washing doesn’t really 100% clean them. Often times a brush and vacuum is 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 I.R cured after the coating was applied – which always looks cool:

After being pulled and 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 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 – 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 1 on 1 lesson on how to best care for their newly protected finish.