Hey,
I'd like to know from those of you who have seen the C7 in person. Do the dark colors still suffer from Orange Peel??

I have had to silver C4's and the paint was fine. I bought a C5 Z new (Lemans Blue) and it had terrible Orange Peel.

If the dark colors still have that problem, I might lean toward silver again. Otherwise the metallic red would be my first choice (I think )

 

In my opinion the paint looks great. I did hear someone complain about orange peel so it may vary..

 

My 09 Z06 has a very good paint job with very little orange peel. I fact it's better than most steel bodied cars. It's a fairly dark color also, being Cyber Gray. I can't imagine that the C7 would be worse, some five years later.

 

Same here with my 10 torch red ZR1 and my 09 Victory red Z06 paint on both were almost flawless very little if any orange peel..hope the C7 Z car will be like that.

 

Remember the cars we are seeing are not production versions. We will have to wait, actual production is starting, we will know soon?

 

I had a 93 Ruby Red 40th. Paint was like glass. Same with my 94 torch red and my black '02 C5 Zed. My current '09 blade silver Zed has horrible orange peel and some "tiger striping" of the silver down one side. Really crappy paint. I figure it's the luck of the draw and if the robots were out drinking heavy the night before.

 

I am afraid that no color will be perfect in its application. I have seen examples of every color where the paint finish was very good to very poor. It is function of application termperature, humidity and even batch quality. If you can afford to wait and buy off the lot you may be better off especially if you are particular to these types of things.

 

I had some on my 2010 . It was not orange peel in the paint but the clear coat. Which is the case most of the time. Wet sand and wheeling makes most cars look like show cars.
Too bad the Dealer had to have his *** handed to him by a GM guy that I called in. The car was there four days getting things fixed that he found before I was called to come pick it up.
I know it should have had the clear coat issues caught at the plant, among the rest of the items. But the Dealer is the last stop before the buyer.
Too bad Dealers can't up their game!

 

All new cars seem to be affected by orange peel in the paint except Aston Martin and I even saw one of those with slight orange peel a few months ago. During my last stop at our local Ferrari dealership all of the new cars I observed had orange peel. I have been told it is the result of switching to water based paint.

 

The phenomena of "orange peel" is a widely known and avoidable issue with modern environmentally controlled paint booths utilizing robotic controlled guns. There is no excuse for shipping a car with orange peel, it is a function of poor workmanship and lack of quality control. If my C7 in black shows up at the dealer with paint defects, I will refuse delivery!

 

Yes, saw black one at Cruise - no M-plate....obivous orange peel on right front panel. Another friend and I noted this....

 

I'm not going to defend shipping a car with orange peel, but it is not a cut and dried as the above post suggests. I have worked in a factory automotive paint shop and am here to tell you that any environmental variable can throw the finely tuned systems off when the air is going past the car at 70 ft. a minute. If something malfunctions to the point of causing orange peel or other defects, oftentimes it a very minor change. We had state of the art lighting in our inspection area and there were times when that was not enough to see defects until you got the job assembled and off the end of line out in the sunshine. And if they happened to get out the door and loaded on a rail car or transport on an overcast day you just may have shipped something you should not have shipped.
So the moral of the story is do not accept a car sitting inside under florescent until you have seen it in the sun because you just might be disappointed. About 50% or more of the cars I have purchased new I have found a paint defect once moved outside into the sun. They are not always big but they are there none the less.

 

Let me know your dealer's name....

 

My son worked for a while as a supervisor in the paint area of a body shop and as previously mentioned the orange peel effect on newer cars is due to the environmentally friendly low VOC content clear coat. Some Insurance companies that worked with the body shop don't care and won't pay the extra labor to correct the issue while a few will refuse the car if it is any less than perfect. As noted buffing and polishing can remove the orange peel most of the time.

 

Ferraris and Porsches (as well as almost every car on the road) have orange peel. Do you think a cheapo Corvette won't have any? Getting rid of orange peel requires a very labor-intensive process that nobody does. I don't recall if Rolls Royce or Bentley do some 'paint correction' to eliminate most of it, but haven't heard of any other. Although I'm almost sure the uber-expensive exotics like Koenigsegg and Pagani do that, but you're talking almost 7 figures. Not a big deal for most people.

 

Every corvette I have ever owned C4,C5, C5z, both C6z's all had orange peel, its called mass production, the newer tooling might help, but it will always be there.
This is not a hand built car, its some of the areas that GM has to skimp on to keep price down.
I had a couple hairs in both my 99 and 2000 C5 coupes
It really never bothered me

 

Don't forget Viper, they go through a long process, and a ton of hand wet sanding, they always had great fit and finish, my 99 doesn't have a spec of orange peel on it, and the painting process is on a whole new level with the gen 5's

 

I think what bothers me about the orange peel is like I mentioned before it can be buffed/polished out of the clear coat but the factory won't spend the hour in labor to make it look perfect. I guess they figure they can blame it on the inferior products they are now mandated to use by the EPA and this is a result and everyone has the same problem regardless of brand.

It unfortunate some more time was not spent to find a better grade low VOC clear coat but you see this same issue with many of the non-freon based cleaning agents used in manufacturing, nowhere near as effective but then again saving the planet.

In the end spend another $100.00 in labor to give someone the perfect car, not going to happen in todays day and age unless your paying an extreme amount for the car.

 

As WFP above points out, it is not that easy. Orange peel has been around long before low VOC paints were used.

Michael

 

Then there really would be no excuse for one off, hand built would there be ? Sadly, the LRG car that was at the Lone Star Classic had it. It was covered in another thread.