dironvictorious

I just got new Apsis slotted front flaps and side skirt put on my Zo6 last month. I had the rear quarter panels resprayed and rear inlets replaced. They were covered in rock chips.

I was looking over car today and there seems to be new chips on rear quarter panels (just resprayed!) at front of wheel arches. The rest of fender and inlets are fine. Is this still rocks coming off the car's tires at this point, or more likely rocks from other cars?

I hoping these come out with a detail.Two of these look bigger than previous chips, but not as deep. I have been holding off summer detail until new paint cures. My nose and front fenders are fine. As are both mirrors.

Is the only solution with these cars a wrap and or light color (my car is black)?


All the previous damage was done in the first month or two of driving. I then put on flaps and only saw some very minor chipping after that. My detail guy looked at car before it went to body shop. He thought could polish every thing out except then inlets and the previous deep chips in lower rear fenders. The factory tape seems to do a good job protecting the lower rockers.

Here are picks first from area showing new (albeit moderate damage) and then close up. I have phone/camera near body.





Close up of flap and skirt joint.



Angle from area of apparent new damage (lower rear quarter panel at front of wheel arch).

3 Z06ZR1

ACS splash guards front. The GM ones on the rear and 3/4 shirts are doing the job. I do drive on pretty clean roads try to stay off gravel roads. Plus what tire are you using? I heard the Cup tires are even worse than the MPSS for picking up rocks. No chips on either side.

dironvictorious

I have Apsis front flaps (slotted for skirts) and their side skirts. No rear flap, but have no damage behind rear wheel. I am running the factory super sports (no cups). I only drive paved roads, of course with all the constant repaving in NJ there are times when have to run over grated pavement. I hear skirts and flaps doing their job over that sort of stuff or rocks/tree bark washed onto back roads by rain.

HorsePowerObsessed

I am pretty thankful I waited and didn't put out almost 400 dollars for those apsis guards. I had my doubts about them working any better than any of the rest of the splash guards out there but this confirms it. Basically the guards need to be LOWER not wider in order to stop this from happening. The only guards I can see working are the god awful looking ones that are cut from a truck mudflap and bought from an auto parts store (it's on this forum somewhere). I wish someone would come up with a nicer solution because my rear fenders and brake ducts are getting beat up even with the ACS guards and stock side skirts.

djnice

You pretty much have to put on flaps that stick out as far as the tire and hang down below the side skirt about 2 inches. Plus get plastic film on the rear quarter.

dironvictorious

I added pics above. There isn't gap between skirt and flap and skirt is long and relatively wide. This is APSIS slotted skirt and their wide flap !!!! There should be very little able to get past out side of skirt and make contact with body.

These seems to be more fine chips or deep scratches on driver side vs passenger side. Perhaps I take more hard right turns, or this is from passing vehicles vs front tires.

I will take a pic of rear quarters in sunlight after cleaning them up. I might wait for my detailer (this weekend) and do them after wash/before polish and then after full polish/wax. I still have some shallow chips (clear coat?) ahead of inlets from before put flaps on let alone skirts/slotted flaps.

My detailer thinks can polish those out. Hence, why I didn't have my body guy respray rocker panels or doors (few more scratch like hits on rear of doors, vs deep chips).

I am hoping he gets all the new and old out, and these things keep damage to surface level stuff. If he gets them all out, I guess will need to wrap at least rear quarters and entire rocker area. My lower rockers are actually fine, which is sort of strange. '

I am becoming really disappointed the tire combo and body design now. We shouldn't have to do all this work to avoid this level of damage on a $90-120K car driven mostly on paved clean roads during spring through fall!!!. My car is not even two years old and has 6,000 mile on it! This respray was 4-6 weeks ago with maybe 500 miles of pleasure driving sense on mostly clear interstates and two lanes. I remember how good it felt knowing the skirts were on the few times had to drive over grated pavement or there were some pebbles or wood chip pieces in the road. And I checked after both of these events, and didn't see any damage. Granted, I didn't look with my detailing light until tonight. I maybe went over some road grit twice at low speeds this weekend, and most of sound was from rear tires.

I had zero problems with my supercharged C7 Stingray and drove that everywhere for 20K miles over two years. And don't recall C6 Zo6/ZR1 folks having these issues at such low mileage and use.

GM should provide a fully effective skirt/flap combo standard from factory, and if still needed PPF for full rockers and rear quarter bulges.

On any 2016 and early Zo6 they should provide this us for free with full pain correction including respray. Does ZR1 have different set-up?

We should get this set-up for free if it works along with respray or other professional paint chip repair.

At this point, I might just forget about and it work something with dealer where drive until sand blasted and trade up

dironvictorious

The APSIS set up is as wide as front tire, but doesn't hang below skirt. However, skirt is full length front/rear and amongst widest along entire length. See pics added above.

How is GM selling these cars this way without significant customer sat or warranty work? I know the standard half skirt is widely believed to have been added to 17 Zo6 and GS for this reason. But if these longer and wider kits aren't solving the problem, how is that helping? Does it slow down damage or reduce severity enough that most drives don't notice?

What drew my eye to initial damage (literally within 2 months and 1000 miles) was damage to inlets and area in front and above them behind the doors. The APSIS flaps seem to stop that. I stepped up to skirts because began noticing some scratches and chips in upper rear quarters and rear of doors. The skirts seem to stop that so far. However the front of lower rear quarters (just resprayed) seems to still be taking hits (albeit lighter ones).

I reserving final judgement until see everything after a detail. My detailer claimed could polish out everything except inlets and the deeper chips in upper rear quarters. My stock tape is beat up pretty bad, so guess that will stay that way. I so excited with geat work body guy did on quarters/inlets that was even thinking of re-doing doors or rockers if detailer couldn't fix them and these skirts/flaps really worked.

Perhaps, better with professional paint chip repair, or just viewing paint in these areas as a wear indicator for trade in.

hcvone

Was tired of putting up with it, so along with stage 3 ground effects, GM splashguards, my last 2 Z06's have been 100% clear wrapped, every painted and or CF surface, and end of problem, well except paying for it

gve

Went with the truck type flap, no stone nicks. May not be the prettiest, but no one has ever noticed them and they do work.

madrob2020

Always has been & will be when buying Vettes with the wider tires/sticky tires (MSS & Cups). Zs are more prone to this even with fenders bulged out. The rocks are thrown up under skirts, bounce along till they clear the narrow part, then wack. The rear brake opening takes a beating as well as inside aft edge of fender well. For my brake ducts I use black electrician tape cut to fit neatly over duct edges, multiple pieces & trimmed very carefully with exacto type knife. Also have the Auto Zone special wide & low front flaps. This all helps but will never stop all nicks from rocks. The more miles of smiles, the more damage. I've posted before that on my 1 mile chip/seal county road even driving at only 20mph, I can see the small rocks flying up along the hood & windows. I find the tiny rocks in the engine bay, top aft edge of hatch, under spoiler, & in the drain tray for the hatch. Even find some inside car when top is off. The haters will hate but unless someone was looking for these 2 things (flaps/tape) they will not notice.

dironvictorious

The vents look good (so far), but tape is a good idea. Before my flaps, I use to get rocks in the cabin with the top off!!! The flaps alone stop nearly all damage. I was hoping skirts would have protected this last area. I presume it was mostly the sort of ricochets' you mentioned, along with occasional magic bullet coming off tire at high angle low to ground. I am disappointed but wouldn't say that the existing after market stuff is "waste". The area being damaged is much smaller and rate of damage is much slower than when naked. It is just a bummer after respray. I wonder how much of this is coming from other vehicle's - given we are much wider and lower.

sunsalem

Absolutely.

HorsePowerObsessed

This is exactly why the APSIS setup isn't good enough. I almost bought them myself hoping it would fix this issue but after reading through the forums here I realized the problem is the splash guard doesn't hang down low enough to stop the rocks from getting through a space between the guard and the side skirt. It doesn't matter how wide the guard is, it needs to be longer to block the rocks/road debris.

madrob2020

Found out with 1st install of O'Reilly splash guards you can only lower to about 1 1/2" above ground before they will scrape on dips, mine did it even in sharp curves-OUCH!

Warp Factor

You might be obsessing over details on you car, that hardly anyone else will ever notice.

As far as resale value goes, I'd much rather purchase a car with a few rock chips, than one with panels which have been resprayed one or more times. Go easy on your "respray" strategies. Maybe your body guy can respray in a way that nobody can detect, but that's highly unlikely. If non-factory paint is detected, that raises questions about the car having been in an accident, and will suggest to most people that there are greener pastures.

OnPoint

I put XPEL covering entire rear quarter panel, plus brake vent area. No issues, and has held up quite well.

It seems you have to go all the way to clear bra the rear quarters to fully protect these.

jim2092

Expel has a custom product pre-cut to protect the exposed edge of the rear brake vents. Product P0604BX-U contains two clear vent protectors. The internet shows how to apply. Soak in slightly soapy water, apply to clean surface, use hair dryer (heat gun) to gently dry while smoothing out wrinkles.

salcolkat

Same here, I agree just not for everyone, but have not once had anyone notice them.

dironvictorious

Understood. This is why only resprayed area where both body shop and detailer agreed there wasn't another fix, the damage was highly noticeable, and body guy was confident could get a near perfect match and not touch any other panels. To your point, I suspect most people would have never noticed anything except maybe the inlets. Just like they think all cars have "spiderwebs" refractions (swirl marks) in the sun

mdolandese

This is why I had my entire car done with PPF so I didn't have to worry about rock chips. I also did the front with ACS splash guards and the rear with GM, and full length GM side skirts and couldn't be happier.