In reply to wearymicrobe :
Whatever the reason for the cost, I'm not willing to pay it. I am however, willing to pay $300 and put in some work.
For $3000 I'd be looking at paint. For the 3M wrap it would be $800-900 for enough to do the car. That leaves $2000 in labor.
I worked with vinyl quite a bit at my previous job. Proper care pre-wrap makes removal significantly easier., so does a warm day and a lot of sunshine. Sounds like you nailed it with the dish soap and other prep. 3m and avery are good products and will make both install and removal more manageable. Still, it's not the easiest thing in the world - looks like you're catching on quickly with great results.
Patientzero said:In reply to wearymicrobe :
Whatever the reason for the cost, I'm not willing to pay it. I am however, willing to pay $300 and put in some work.
For $3000 I'd be looking at paint. For the 3M wrap it would be $800-900 for enough to do the car. That leaves $2000 in labor.
You're not going to get a very good paint job for $3k!
3K is the paint, primer and sandpaper.
I two-toned my race van by myself with Vvivid brand. 
Matte electric blue.
I did mine without the help of Knifeless Teflon Tape which I had not learn of until after
Or, Roll on Kirker AU single stage for a few hundred total.
https://www.ebay.com/b/Kirker-Automotive-Finishes-Automo hitive-PNaints-Supplies/179421/bn_115946681
Anybody think this guy's Jag did not turn out OK?
This wrap is cool but also labor intensive. But taking nothing away from the great work! done here on the Mustang. I'm tempted to try wrapping one of my heaps ,only problem is it is a fastback hardtop 12 feet unbroken width from rear quarter panel over the roof and down the other side. Hmmmm maybe a stripe down the side to allow for a seam.....will wrap cling to Gray primer?
Ah, the Rusteoleum option. If you're going to spend that much time sanding, why not shoot real paint? That guy put down 7 coats plus wetsanding in between and then a bunch of polish at the end.
3M 1080 vinyl, professionally wrapped because it was either farm it out or pay our own guys to learn as they went, and that math doesn't work in a shop like it does at home. The black sills are also vinyl.
No Kirker is acrylic urethane....
Same concept. Prep, thin, apply, sand, apply, sand, apply, sand, apply, sand, apply, sand, apply, sand, apply, sand, sand, polish.
Does wrap show up every little ding and scratch or is there some hiding effect?
It does show the condition of the surface, so door dings will come through. Scratches probably not unless they're spectacular, but I'd still knock the edges down with some Scotchbrite if I wasn't trying to preserve the paint. Obviously the color and gloss will have an effect on this just like paint - gloss black will be a lot less forgiving than a matte grey like PatientZero is using.
If I had an, umm, heavily experienced car that I was looking for the best possible result on, I'd probably do a quick high yield primer and give it a quick sand. No need to get into 5000 grit or anything, just level the whole thing out.
Best wrap I've seen was a Mercedes GT, the gullwing thing. It had a mirror on it. The awesome part was that I saw it at the track covered in chunks of rubber as the driver checked the condition of his race tires...
My buddy does wraps on the side from time to time. He buys from fellers online.
He wrapped his civic flat black and it lasted about 4 years. Then I peeled a panel because I was tired of looking at the peeling edges. It was a about 70% humidity and 80 that day and it peeled off great with no residue at all.
He said the worse thing with flat black was curves. If you heat or stretch the flat colors those spots will be glossy and stand out like a sore thumb.
But good wrap ain't cheap and it's a lot of work. I helped him black out a hood indent and I realized this ain't really my thing. Takes a lot of patience and time so I completely understand why they charge what they charge. I know I wouldn't charge less than that. Good wrap, razor tape, alcohol, rags, good squeegees all add up. And if you live where it's hot, you have to do it inside, most wraps tell you to install under 75.
But I also understand being a cheapskate, so am I. I'll never wrapped because of cost and time and my stuffs not worth it.
Here are some pictures of the process, I'm sure video would be alot more helpful but I'm only one man.
After cleaning, cut a piece of vinyl to the rough size/shape you need. I recommend leaving at least 6" extra length on all your edges. It helps to have something to grab onto to stretch and get your wrinkles out. I recruited my daughter to make some little bags out of a cut up microfiber towel to put magnets inside of. You could also cut the fingers off of some cotton gloves or if you just want to take the easy way out, Amazon sells felt covered magnets for this very purpose. At this stage I also lifted up the edges of the vinyl and wiped down everything one last time with 50% isopropyl alcohol on a microfiber towel. You want to make sure there is NOTHING under your vinyl or you're going to see it.
Peel the backing and stretch the vinyl on at your widest point. This will make it easier to get the wrinkles out. In this case our aim was right behind the sunroof.
You can see there are still wrinkles and bubbles to work out at this point. Some of the small bubbles will go away when you squeegee the wrap. You have to be careful though because if you just try to squeegee out a large bubble it may make a sharp crease of material. You can get rid of the crease by pulling the vinyl back up and applying a small amount of heat from the the heat gun. The vinyl will "heal" itself and then you can re-stretch to get rid of it. There are grooves designed into the glue to allow air to escape but you still want to start from the furthest point from an edge. This way you can pop the vinyl back up and stretch and squeegee together to work the wrinkles out.
Here I had some large bubbles traped in the middle by the sunroof. Rather than pull the whole back half of the vinyl up to get to those bubbles, I went ahead and cut a rough shape for the sunroof while leaving plenty of extra material to pull and stretch. You can see where the material is wrinkled on the sunroof. This is an area that I pulled up and stretched to get wrinkles out.
At this point I trimmed around the sunroof again and started smoothing the vinyl all the way up to the rubber seal. Trying to start tucking the vinyl underneath the seal.
Here is the sunroof after a final trim and tucking the edge.
Same process as the sunroof around the front and rear glass.
On my car the entire A to C pillar piece above the door is removable so it made this next part pretty easy. I just trimmed back the vinyl leaving enough to make sure it would be covered by the other parts. Make sure you trim BEHIND your wrinkles. Leaving wrinkles on the edge is just inviting moisture in and will make your edges peel up.
Finished Roof.
I love it!
Sweet. Makes me want to try it but I like all the colors of all my cars.
Is buying a car just to try a diy wrap going too far?
Will you post the youtube guides that you found most helpful while they're fresh in your mind? And share pictures of the areas that came out worst & the stuff you're most disappointed with? The silver looks good, hope it kicks the aesthetics can down the road for many years
That’s a good step by step.
One note for living with a wrap: vinyl loves to stick to vinyl. If you put a sticker on the wrap, it’s permanent.
So to answer the question about what shows through (at least with vvivid), here's what my daily beater looked like:
Here it is 15ish hours later. I spent less than 2 hours on doing anything to smooth out the nasty, multi-layer paint over everything, and most of that involved chipping off the big chunks that were falling off. I'm sure I didn't do as good of a job as patient zero:
That's vvivid viper lime green gloss with a matte black for the stripe.
hvoxi said:Will you post the youtube guides that you found most helpful while they're fresh in your mind? And share pictures of the areas that came out worst & the stuff you're most disappointed with? The silver looks good, hope it kicks the aesthetics can down the road for many years
Here are the main videos I watched.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU8f8pi06Hs&t=5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqDbNU-bd4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFg_Fj6W0R4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcSOUlwtIHQ
As for the stuff I'm most disappointed with? Other than a couple random specs of dirt that was almost unavoidable due to me working outside, these dumb side scoops are by far the worst. I couldn't figure out how to get the material down in the slot. It was too far to stretch and cutting it and folding it over didn't leave enough material. I ended up doing them in two pieces starting with inside the slot first and then overlapping it with the main body of material. I'm not thrilled with the seams but I can live with it for now. I could always pull them off and trying again down the road. I'm very happy with how the rest of the car has turned out so far.
I would have been tempted to paint the inside of the scoop black or just do the whole thing in a different paint color. That’s an impossible surface to wrap.
Looks awesome. I'm curious to know a bit more about the car. I have a 380R that mostly sits around these days but still has the Alcon brakes and all that. What do you use for brake rotors?
enginenerd said:Looks awesome. I'm curious to know a bit more about the car. I have a 380R that mostly sits around these days but still has the Alcon brakes and all that. What do you use for brake rotors?
If you're a diehard Ford guy then you probably don't want to know about the car, lol. I still have factory rotors. The car was originally a stage 2, the previous owner put the stage 3 brakes on, so they aren't as old as the car. When it comes time to replace them I will likely go to a different brake setup. I'm most interested in factory S197 or S550 Brembos. Baer sells replacement rotors but I think they're ~$700 a set.
Wow, the rough areas seem pretty acceptable on camera- they look no worse than a run or fisheye from here. The Mustang looks good in that silver. I hope vinyl quality/lifespan continues to improve.
Please let us know if you begin to get tired of living with it, or it develops other issues- I'd wager there are a few people planning on doing their own after seeing the pictures
Patientzero said:enginenerd said:Looks awesome. I'm curious to know a bit more about the car. I have a 380R that mostly sits around these days but still has the Alcon brakes and all that. What do you use for brake rotors?
If you're a diehard Ford guy then you probably don't want to know about the car, lol. I still have factory rotors. The car was originally a stage 2, the previous owner put the stage 3 brakes on, so they aren't as old as the car. When it comes time to replace them I will likely go to a different brake setup. I'm most interested in factory S197 or S550 Brembos. Baer sells replacement rotors but I think they're ~$700 a set.
Haha, I'm not a diehard Ford fanboi. Mine was a salvage car, is painted an obnoxious color, and such. I'm cheap enough to not pay for the Baer rotors so I've been thinking about it. I haven't gotten further than taking some measurements and drafting it up in CAD but I'm reasonably confident I'll be using the 14" rotors from an S197 GT500. Looks like they will fit with minor modification to the caliper brackets.
You'll need to log in to post.
