cerino2000

My buddy has opted to keep his Z for a while so my interest is gone. Thanks for all the feedback.

$$$frumnuttin'

Few have sold, and those that did lowered their prices by thousands over a period of weeks. I have been watching since October, and it seems to be getting worse. A couple guys gave up and took the dealer trade-ins as a last resort because their new vehicles were in. The wide body is 50/50 desirability. You would do best to return to stock and reap the cash you'll get for the widebody stuff locally...just my opinion, of course.

MarkRx

are you interested in selling your comp grey wheels?

LowFlight

I might be interested if the car were put back to stock and the price was do-able for me. PM Me

hiznhrz

Depending on price, I'd be interested in your car just like it sits. If you are serious, PM me please.

Tonylmiller

Widebody conversions seem to sell very well here, IMHO. I'd say offer it like it is. You will probably have to price it $8k to $10k under sticker price in order to get much interest, I would think. Dealers are offering discounts, and it is a used car now. But it does have the widebody conversion working for it.

eurotrashkicker

looking forward to you posting a price....

cerino2000

I put it on Craigslist for $49.9k as it sits.

I'll let you guys know what kind of interest I get with it and if I sell it I'll tell you what it goes for so others have a reference point. Thanks for the input.

LPE385

Cerino2000, you have been on here long enough to know that on a current model year car your best bet is to take the best deal offered here on the Forum and subtract thousands. If someone can go buy that car for GMS, Supplier, etc. which is the price you more than likely paid for it and subtract appox. $3,000 to $4,000 in stock trim.

cerino2000

We'll find out. Believe it or not, every Corvette I have ever sold went locally for nearly KBB retail value. I am one of the few people that knows how to keep swirls off a black car and each one I sold, the buyer was glowing as soon as they saw the car. Each one, the first person that saw it, went right to the bank, brought cash back with them for the deposit, and bought it. As big as this forum is, everyone with the exception of my last C6 went to someone who didn't even know that the forum existed. The forum always will be the worst place to sell a Corvette which is why I always sell them outside of the forum. NC is similar to Florida in that you don't stand a chance at finding a dealer that will sell them for what forum dealers will and a lot of people aren't willing to travel to get them. I am guessing I will get $49k out of it as it sits just based on experience. Like I said, I'll let you guys know how it does so there is some kind of solid benchmark. I was hoping I wasn't the first to do it and someone else set the benchmark. It's not a firesale and if my buddy decides not to sell his I will be pulling it off the market but we'll see.

stax68

ok..spill the beans..how do you keep the swirls off...

cerino2000

It's a painful ritual, you really wanna know?

sixsixvette

I think we would all like to hear a trick or two from time to time Always looking to improve the looks and process

eurotrashkicker

It's true! We on this site are the insane ones . We almost know to much about the market and this car. Most people don't. Hope it sells for what you want. If not let us know.

2008corvette

Very nice looking car , I don't think you'll have a problem selling.

I sold my 08 Coupe back in mid October. It was Victory Red with Ebony Interior, MN6, Z51, 3LT and Navigation. The MSRP was $53,945, I bought the car for $48,300 and sold it for $47,000. I almost sold it on this Forum but the buyer backed out, I ended up selling my car on Ebay Motors. I lost alittle money but I'm glad the cars gone, now I don't have to worry about selling it in the Spring. I sold my car because I want a Z06 instead.
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=1812503

cerino2000

Ok here goes:

First thing is to remember the following phrase:

The key to keeping swirls off your car is to never let them get on the car

Now, granted that appears to be a simple phrase but there are a lot of implications of following that rule. Although YOU may be able to keep swirls off your car with the tips that I am going to lay out below, the problem is that your dealer or any other place where you will have the car serviced will not oblige this rule. Any swirls to be found on my car came from situations such as that. For example, I had my car in for an oil change. The technician got a fingerprint on the car and used their shop rag to wipe if off. Done. Swirl added.

Also note that I am not only talking about swirls, I am talking about the super fine (micro) scratches that are part of normal car ownership.

In my particular situation, I have a garage that I put up called "the man room". I was constructed for the sake of toys such as the vette. What is significant about this is that I have two overhead flourescent light fixtures mounted from the ceiling. Believe it or not, normal daylight doesn't show everything. The best time for a car inspection for things like swirls is at night in a building such as mine with strong flourescent lights.

Example: When I had my first C6, I was one of the first to get the delaminating top. This was before they came up with the idea of trying to fix it, back then they just replaced it. Dealer shop paints it and used one of the worst things ever on a swirl free car: a buffer.

When I picked the car up, it looked great. Later that evening I put the car in the Man Room and was nearly sick. The rest of the car was beautiful but the roof panel was a solid wall of swirls. There were so many swirls the paint on the roof almost looked like a different shade. They don't always show up in daylight but get the car under good light, and good light never lies. Most body shops won't put a strong light on your car to see how well their work is. Imagine when I took the car back to see if they could do anything about it. Naturally, they didn't see what I was talking about and I wasn't going to ask them to come to my house that evening into the man room and see what I was talking about.

So what's the point of that whole story? It shows you an example of the rule. The car got swirls on it because I failed to keep them off. I let someone else touch the car. What could I have done about that? Not a whole lot. Maybe told them not to buff it or something I don't know but point is you will be in situations like this all the time. You have to make an active effort to tell your dealerships not to wash your car, wipe oil off your car, or do anything that would cause them to have to touch the paint on your car if at all avoidable.

Next thing you have to do is use clean wash techniques. This can get expensive but if you want to keep the swirls off, this is how you keep them from getting on.

Go to good ol' Walmart and in the auto section they have Microfiber towels. You want the lambskin wash mit, a pack or two of the smaller detailing towels and if you can find them, the slightly larger detailing towels.

Rule number one when dealing with microfiber: If it hits the ground, it's done. From that point the rag that hits the ground becomes either a wheel or an interior towel. Since you are going to want to use at least one rag for interior anyways, you can do a little experiment to see what I oblige the "once dropped it's done" rule. You will notice that the microfiber towels almost have a sticky feel to them. That's because the pick up everything and that feeling is that towel trying to hook the pores in your skin. Take the towel that you will dedicate to interior and let it hit the ground. Nice and simple, now pick it up. Take a REAL close look at it, both sides. Don't see anything. look again and look closer. Those towels are designed to be sticky. The ground is what has all the tiny little pieces of hard dirt that when embedded into your towel, are the things that give you the swirls and the micro scratches.

Swirls and micro-scratches are a result of something abrasive being dragged across your clear coat. I can tell you that I have never had a micro towel brand new come out of the package that had dirt on them. I inspect each one (and you should too). It's the only way to oblige the rule. In order for me to make sure that I am not putting a swirl on the car I need to make sure that there is nothing on that rag that is going to do that so I check them.

Another rule, only lay a microfiber towel on another microfiber towel or in a known clean bag. When storing them, seal off the bag to keep any potential abrasive off the towel.

Now that the basics are covered, go ahead a soak the car. Avoid washing a black car in the sun. Black cars + water + the sun = Water marks. Once in, the only way to get them out is to buff the car. We already talked about that. Just don't do it. Avoid it and do NOT allow the car to dry in the sun under any circumstances. You can get away with washing it in the sun so long as you never let it dry in the sun but that requires you to be constantly keeping the car wet. My son helps me.

Soak the car well and only use the new lambskin mit for washing. This mitt is nice a slipery when wet so that works for you in picking out any dirt off of it that it may accumulate from the lower portions of the car. If I do a wash swipe on the very lower portion of the car (below doors for example) I inspect the mit to make sure there is nothing abrasive on the mit. If there is, I pick it off and verify before letting that mit hit the car again.

You can usually get about 2 washings per mit before it has too much stuff on it for me to be comfortable that there is nothing on it that will micro scratch the car. Then I buy a new one.

Blow dry the car with a leaf blower if you can. Do not blow dry it around things like dried leaves. It can kick up the dirt onto your wet car and that will stick right into the micro fiber towel and if not seen, you will drag it right across the clear coat and will have just added a micro scratch and or swirl. If you allow water to naturally dry, there's a pretty good chance that you will wind up with water spots. Hit the leaf blower on the tail lights, all marker lights and emblems in addition to the rest of the car. The car with have about 80% of the water off when I am done with the leaf blower. You hit the lights and emblems because water gets trapped under there and likes to come rolling out right after your wax and may leave water spots.

When drying, (and washing for that matter) DON'T use circular motions. Use a straighline motion on your panels. I use the large micro fiber towel for the majority of the rest of the drying process after I have inspected the towel for any abrasives. I literally wrap a good portion of the towel around my bare forearm to keep it from dragging the ground and picking up abrasives. After using the big towel for this, I will finish with a once over using the smaller detailing towels.

I say again, the key to keeping swirls off the car is to not allow them to get on the car. Swirls and micro scratches are a result of small abrasives getting on the rag that you are using for washing or drying and then dragging those abrasives across your clear coat. If you avoid the situations that can add those abrasives you can keep the swirls off.

Inspect the rag/mit that you use VERY closely. If it hits the ground, it's DONE. This is why I say this can get expensive. I typically wind up buying a set of rags every other (or third) wash. I wind up with a lot of interior and wheel rags but no dirty rag touches my car.

Sorry its long and drawn out but it is a chore to keep them off. Black cars looks best though as long as they're clean.

Don't want to have to go through all this to maintain a swirl free car? Buy a silver one. Silver is a boring color to me but one of the Z's I looked at was silver and you could not find a swirl mark in that thing. They are invisible on silver.

cerino2000

2008 Corvette, thank you for that info!

love my car

Great write up cerino 2000,i have a black car,and to be honest when i go for my next one it wont be black.Just curious are you saying a silver car WONT get swirls or scratchs from a wash rag????

cerino2000

Oh, it gets them all right, it's just that the swirls are the same color (or close enough) as the paint so they don't show up like they do on a dark color car.

CHASLS2

Thank you for the very well done read Cerino2000! Guess it's kinda late for my 06 LMB, under the over head light in my garage it shows all kinds of swirls and micro sleeks.