Things I've learned during my wrap project
Discussion
I've never wrapped an entire car before and the sum total of my experience working with vinyl was when I put some stripes on my car last year. Given this, here is what I learned:
This is a difficult and time-consuming task. I worked on it for a month and a half mostly nights and weekends.
Seeing videos on installing vinyl is a great education but it will never substitute doing it yourself and wasting a bunch of expensive material. I'm convinced I could do the same job now in 75% of the time with 75% of the vinyl. Be prepared to break some eggs!
The flakes in metallic matte vinyl is directional so if you have adjoining panels they should be oriented the same way to avoid mismatches in color appearance. This means that you require more material than if you were using other kinds of vinyl.
The lack of seams on Astons means that you need longer pieces to do a single panel. For example, the wing panel from the base of the A-pillar near the bonnet to the taillight is one contiguous piece. This also means that if you screw up, you just wasted an even bigger piece of material.
You can wrap a car with about 50ft of 6-foot wide vinyl if you know what you're doing. More if it's metallic though.
That much vinyl costs about $600US so the rest of the price you pay to have your car wrapped is in the labor (and it's worth it).
There is no need to cut using a knife on the painted surface of the car. Look up "knifeless tape" to see how it's done.
Wrapping your door jambs and sills really completes the finish and makes the job look more professional. Of course it costs more.
Taking off things like lights, bumpers, trim, badges, etc. is essential to a quality-looking, professional job.
Car wrap vinyl is an amazing material. You can practically wad it up into a ball and pull it apart and after applying some heat it will return to an almost new appearance with no wrinkles.
The consistency of vinyl wrap material varies dramatically when heat is applied. It gets floppy and thin like cellophane when warm and much more rigid once it cools.
Air-regress technology is awesome in avoding annoying air bubbles on large panels, but it can still leave air pockets in small creases and other recesses.
The car must be absolutely spotless and dust free. The most minute spec of dust shows as a small pimple under the surface that cannot be removed.
Stretching out the material over the surface as smoothly as possible to create "glass" prior to using a squeegee is essential to making nice surfaces and avoiding wrinkles as you work out to the edges of the material.
Over-stretching vinyl beyond its threshold will cause it to get irreparably damaged. Gloss film will turn cloudy. Matte film will turn glossy. You need to learn the limits of what the material can do.
Working alone is doable, but it would be nice to have two qualified installers working simultaneously. There is not enough work to keep an untrained assistant busy more than 2% of the time, so having a second trained installer allows that person to work independently on other parts of the car during the remaining 98% of the time they are not helping you. Wish I had such an assistant. Would have made my life way easier and the job wouldn't have taken 1.5 months.
If you don't have patience and attention to detail, or don't know how to take a car body apart, I would suggest you get a professional to do it for you.
The professional wrap installers certainly earn every cent they charge for this job. Seriously, pay someone else to do it.
Matte finishes on paint an vinyl wraps is a pain to maintain if you have serious OCD issues like me. Every place you touch you will leave a shiny oil mark that has to be removed by wiping with isopropyl alcohol.
Apparently, bug guts are oily too. Every gnat and noseeum that flys in the path of your car at speed will leave a shiny splotch that will need to be wiped down as well.
Modern Astons are nicely engineered and designed to be taken apart fairly easily.
The quality of materials chosen is way above the standard of most cars. I know it doesn't do much for weight-savings but this isn't an Elise nor doesn't pretend to be. When you hold the big, heavy hunk of solid metal that is the door pull, door sill, or side strake you appreciate that they are not made of chintzy plastic like in most cars.
I am certain that I could do a much better job than the typical final quality inspector who puts his name on the plaque in your car. When I come across some build defects I am surprised that anyone (other than Mr. Maggoo) actually claims to have looked the car over.
Factory approved service centers aren't much better. I found a few clear coat paint runs and poor prep work from a recent fender-bender repair.
Working on this was therapeutic and now there is a void from having finished the project that must be filled with some new task to learn/do.
No, wouldn't want to do this for someone else's car. The pressures and stress of working on another's P&J and on their schedule would take away the fun, therapeutic parts of it.
This is a difficult and time-consuming task. I worked on it for a month and a half mostly nights and weekends.
Seeing videos on installing vinyl is a great education but it will never substitute doing it yourself and wasting a bunch of expensive material. I'm convinced I could do the same job now in 75% of the time with 75% of the vinyl. Be prepared to break some eggs!
The flakes in metallic matte vinyl is directional so if you have adjoining panels they should be oriented the same way to avoid mismatches in color appearance. This means that you require more material than if you were using other kinds of vinyl.
The lack of seams on Astons means that you need longer pieces to do a single panel. For example, the wing panel from the base of the A-pillar near the bonnet to the taillight is one contiguous piece. This also means that if you screw up, you just wasted an even bigger piece of material.
You can wrap a car with about 50ft of 6-foot wide vinyl if you know what you're doing. More if it's metallic though.
That much vinyl costs about $600US so the rest of the price you pay to have your car wrapped is in the labor (and it's worth it).
There is no need to cut using a knife on the painted surface of the car. Look up "knifeless tape" to see how it's done.
Wrapping your door jambs and sills really completes the finish and makes the job look more professional. Of course it costs more.
Taking off things like lights, bumpers, trim, badges, etc. is essential to a quality-looking, professional job.
Car wrap vinyl is an amazing material. You can practically wad it up into a ball and pull it apart and after applying some heat it will return to an almost new appearance with no wrinkles.
The consistency of vinyl wrap material varies dramatically when heat is applied. It gets floppy and thin like cellophane when warm and much more rigid once it cools.
Air-regress technology is awesome in avoding annoying air bubbles on large panels, but it can still leave air pockets in small creases and other recesses.
The car must be absolutely spotless and dust free. The most minute spec of dust shows as a small pimple under the surface that cannot be removed.
Stretching out the material over the surface as smoothly as possible to create "glass" prior to using a squeegee is essential to making nice surfaces and avoiding wrinkles as you work out to the edges of the material.
Over-stretching vinyl beyond its threshold will cause it to get irreparably damaged. Gloss film will turn cloudy. Matte film will turn glossy. You need to learn the limits of what the material can do.
Working alone is doable, but it would be nice to have two qualified installers working simultaneously. There is not enough work to keep an untrained assistant busy more than 2% of the time, so having a second trained installer allows that person to work independently on other parts of the car during the remaining 98% of the time they are not helping you. Wish I had such an assistant. Would have made my life way easier and the job wouldn't have taken 1.5 months.
If you don't have patience and attention to detail, or don't know how to take a car body apart, I would suggest you get a professional to do it for you.
The professional wrap installers certainly earn every cent they charge for this job. Seriously, pay someone else to do it.
Matte finishes on paint an vinyl wraps is a pain to maintain if you have serious OCD issues like me. Every place you touch you will leave a shiny oil mark that has to be removed by wiping with isopropyl alcohol.
Apparently, bug guts are oily too. Every gnat and noseeum that flys in the path of your car at speed will leave a shiny splotch that will need to be wiped down as well.
Modern Astons are nicely engineered and designed to be taken apart fairly easily.
The quality of materials chosen is way above the standard of most cars. I know it doesn't do much for weight-savings but this isn't an Elise nor doesn't pretend to be. When you hold the big, heavy hunk of solid metal that is the door pull, door sill, or side strake you appreciate that they are not made of chintzy plastic like in most cars.
I am certain that I could do a much better job than the typical final quality inspector who puts his name on the plaque in your car. When I come across some build defects I am surprised that anyone (other than Mr. Maggoo) actually claims to have looked the car over.
Factory approved service centers aren't much better. I found a few clear coat paint runs and poor prep work from a recent fender-bender repair.
Working on this was therapeutic and now there is a void from having finished the project that must be filled with some new task to learn/do.
No, wouldn't want to do this for someone else's car. The pressures and stress of working on another's P&J and on their schedule would take away the fun, therapeutic parts of it.
Edited by KarlFranz on Monday 10th March 21:26
yeti said:
6 weeks, blimey Karl!!
How long do you think you'll leave it on there?
I'm going to have a go at some yellow or orange 'lipstick' for Le Mans and hopefully the mob will join me
Using knifeless tape, I could now put lipstick on my car in prolly about 30 minutes of work. Not sure I really like the look of it though. I do have some extra gloss black vinyl, however, so I may just throw some on just to see how it would look at some point. How long do you think you'll leave it on there?
I'm going to have a go at some yellow or orange 'lipstick' for Le Mans and hopefully the mob will join me
Also, I really like the way the car came out, so I may leave the vinyl wrap on there for a long time. The beauty of having done it myself is that I can replace any panel if it ages or gets damaged.
Edited by KarlFranz on Monday 10th March 23:29
KarlFranz said:
Using knifeless tape, I could now put lipstick on my car in prolly about 30 minutes of work. Not sure I really like the look of it though. I do have some extra gloss black vinyl, however, so I may just throw some on just to see how it would look at some point.
It looks good to me, although the poll is not going that way 
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