Our new 2018 just off the truck at dealer
 

No pictures yet as it has to be detailed at the dealer. Will pick it up Monday and depending on the weather will post pictures then.

Long Beach Red stingray convertible, 7 speed man., spice red interior, black top, Machined wheels. Wing spoiler.

this may well be the only one made since most spice red interiors had red tops, and most convertibles are autos.

Some observations. The good: All the Gaps, seats and dash Etc.look outstanding. I see 0 flaws on the whole car. The side panels, doors and fenders have almost 0 orange peel. Much better than our c6. and as far as i can tell in the dealers garage, all the panels paint matches perfectly. Not so on our c6. Bumpers were always a couple of shades off.

the bad. the hood, trunk and top of the bumpers show quite a bit of OP. Especially the trunk lid. Much worse than my c6. Bad enough that I may try to do some correction. I'll wait till it is shined up, but I think once is it is clean it may be worse.

I'm surprised at this, because usually the top surfaces were great, but the sides showed OP. I suspect the trunk lid was painted separately, or repainted at the factory.

Very disappointing. Maybe my expectations of the new shop were too high. But honestly, it is worse than my C6. In fairness, my c6 was really very good. I just was expecting the new to be even better, not worse.

Well, congrats on receiving your new Vette. Sorry the paint condition has somewhat curtailed your excitement. You are right about the OP seeming to be the opposite of where you'd expect to see it, based on your description.

I predicted here about 6 months ago that new paint plant expectations would be unrealistic, and that we'd hear a lot of disappointment once they started showing up.

I have a new one coming in a couple of weeks, and I expect it to be better, but not perfect.

Happy you got it. Hope the OP turns out okay.

Damned hard to see paint from behind the wheel of a brand new 2018 Corvette, my friend. :D

Congrats, sounds like a real head-turner. :cheers:

Anxious to see pics, then.

Congrats!

There were only 3 Stingray convertibles built with spice red interior, obviously yours is one. The other two probably have a different wheels, top and tranny combo, so you just may have 1 of 1.


http://www.corvettemuseum.org/wp-con...ar-End-HWC.pdf

Too late now, but I would not have let them wash/detail outside of car. Too many bad stories of $7 an hour guys just grabbing a bucket, any old rag & soap & end up putting swirls, small scratches, etc. while washing then drying with an old flannel shirt. Congrats tho, I'm sure you will love it. Sounds like an awesome color combo. Many of us do paint correction anyway just for the fun & beauty of the finished product & pride of a job well done.:thumbs:

I think their still dialing in the paint bots.

Not at all disappointed in the paint quality coming from the new paint shop but I am with the moving panel gaps. I thought one of the reasons for changing the way the cars are built was to have the wheels loaded before panel installation instead of afterwards.

For Example- my car has a !.5 MM gap on one side of the hood and 3.25 MM gap on the other side. This is really noticeable by any QC inspector, yet it was apparently considered acceptable tolerance variation at the factory. I don't care that much about the appearance of the discrepancy, but I am concerned about body flex causing the 1 MM gap side to contact and rub the paint in use. Not sure what I am going to do about it as right now there is only enough available play to move the hood about 1 MM to center it. Maybe the fender on the narrow side would have to be shimmed out. In any case I don't want to create a problem where there may be none so for right now I am just enjoying driving it.

Other less important gap issues: Both leading edges of the doors have irregular gaps because the doors are slightly canted vertically. One side is wider at the top and the other door is wider at the bottom. Rear hatch is noticeably off as well from one side to the other but the gaps are larger and the narrow side is unlikely to rub with any body flex.

Congrats on the new ride. I'll wait until you take delivery and can see the finish once it's cleaned up to see what your final impressions are of the paint.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if you have gaps of 1.5/3.25 and you have 1MM available adjustment...if you moved it the full 1MM, that would leave gaps of 2.5/2.25, which would be darn near centered, wouldn't it?

I vaguely remember back when I was on here for my C5, it was mentioned they used simple tool (gap measures) that were slid along gaps & adjustments were made as needed. Maybe all this is now done by Bots w/o humans eyeballing evidently. Seems to be all about "how quick can we get them out the door".

Teaser pic for you... I took it yesterday :)

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...ff165e0e2a.jpg

Thanks, I haven't been there in awhile (10 years). They used to be the only Lotus Dealer within 200 miles, and I took mine there for warranty service. That when I met Mike.

P.S. Congrats on your new Tahoe. That's great color on it.

Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking when I said 1 MM. But trying to move a large panel like the hood so accurately so that it only moves 1 MM might be hard to accomplish. The other question I have is whether the effort, if successful, would preclude paint rubbing from body flex as 2-2.5 MM is less than the 3 MM design gap I read about. I may be trading rubbing paint on one side for rubbing paint on both sides. I intend to take it to a dealer and ask their opinion. I just don't know how much the body might flex. All I know is that some panels seem to have chipping on the edges. Would sure hate to spoil that pristine paint job.

My Corvette club has two members who told me our local dealer caused damage to their cars by washing them. One person had a new 2017 and took it in for its first courtesy oil change. When he returned to pick up his car he was aghast to find them washing the car with a pressure washer and recycled water and he watched them blast the front corvette emblem off the car. The second person had an older vert. They used the pressure washer and it blew out her rear window at the seams. When confronted they said the stitching was weak because of age and it wasn't their problem. Didn't offer to correct it. It is stories like this that cause me to say I will not take it to the local dealer. I am going to end up driving a substantial distance if I need warranty work, which I might have to have because my infotainment system keeps flickering intermittently. Good thing this car is my hobby and I have the time to fool with this.

I really think you are going to be impressed with what you see. I got the chance to really look over my paint this weekend in the bright sunshine and the closer I look the more I'm impressed with it! Mine was built the last week of November, and they've had a few more weeks to possibly fine tune things even further, so I would expect your recently built one to be just as good if not even slightly better. :thumbs:

Same color as my '17 GS :)


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...2307903da7.jpg

Siren red GS :thumbs: