eddie420

Yes, agreed. See mine below. It's difficult to get right with the sharp angles of the tail light fins.

ph0bolus

Looks good, have you had any problems with shrinking? I've had to re-wrap mine like twice due to shrinking on the side tail lights, I guess i'm stretching it too much.

Have you gotten pulled over for your tail lights yet? Haha

chay2263

Any issues with the parking sensors going off with the vinyl on the bumper?

eddie420

You need to make sure the sensors are wrapped individually. If you use one large piece of vinyl, I guarantee you the sensors will go off. The wrap will eventually lift from cold/hot cycles. So yes, you can wrap the sensors, just make sure you do them individually.

eddie420

Haha, no problem with shrinkage. The key is to apply the tint "cold" as much as possible. The only time you should really use heat is in those fins section to get them to stick and not pop back out. When tint/vinyl shrinks, you've definitely overheated it.

And no, did not get pulled over. Why would I?

ph0bolus

Yeah, I did overdo it on the heat at times to remove some wrinkles, that may have contributed to the shrinkage.

It's illegal to restrict visibility of your tail lights, I'm sure some cops don't care, but if one is having a bad day you might catch a ticket.

I didn't wrap them individually like eddie420 had mentioned, I did it all in one piece, and my parking sensors still work fine.

np20412

I did not individually wrap the sensors on my bumper and I have never had an issue.

The people doing Suntek/3M/Xpel are also not individually wrapping them, so it shouldn't be a problem.

eddie420

It depends what type of film you use (e.g., 3M, Avery, Hexis, etc), makes a difference on whether it will stick or lift up over time. Some films are thicker than others and don't sit well.

ph0bolus

Wrapped my door handles, gloss black metallic.

Selahvie

I really like how your calipers turned out. Can you go into a little more detail on how you did them? To paint, did you fully remove the calipers, just remove them from the rotor and hang them in the wheel well, or paint them while on the rotors and just cover everything except the caliper? Also, what did your prep look like before painting? How many coats? Did you clear coat over the top? Thanks in advance!

ph0bolus

Thanks, but unfortunately not mine anymore. I sold it at the end of the year
To paint them though, I left them on the car, and covered everything except the caliper
with bags. As for coats, I sprayed on two coats, but didn't let it dry enough before applying
the vinyl, so had to put on a couple more coats to level off the bit the vinyl peeled off.
Yes, I bought a can of clear coat by VHT and used 2 coats of that.

Prep was pretty basic, removed wheels, went at the calipers with a wire brush to remove most of the caked on brake dust and sprayed a generous amount of brake cleaner on all four and some more wire brushing to be sure.

Selahvie

Sorry you sold it, but thank you so much for jumping back in to answer my questions. I'm going to try it this weekend (with the same color VHT paint) if my decals arrive by then and it's warm enough. I recently got an AWD with the same color combo, so I have enjoyed reading through your build thread for inspiration. Thanks again for the help - I really appreciate it.

ph0bolus

No problems, let me know how it goes and interest to check out your build. I miss mine so much, look at pictures of it daily haha. Moved to a more urban area so didn't need it anymore, but seriously thinking about buying a car now.

UDel

Are you painting yours the VHT copper? I did my calipers copper. I did not remove my calipers. On my previous cars with silver caliper paint I just brushed the paint on from the little liquid brush can and liked how it turned out. I wanted to brush the VHT copper on too but it only comes in a spray so I decanted it but this did not turn out so well. The paint originally was very watery and the copper would not really go on metal very well when I tested it, even after it letting sit in a bottle several hours, so I opened the jar more and let it dry a extra day, the paint got very thick, pretty much too thick to work with, it went on the metal but it was too thick to get a good brush finish with it as as soon as you brush it on, it would glop on and would not spread enough which was using too much. I would have had to end up buying another can which I did not have nor had time to do. After a lot of cursing I decided I just have to spray it on the calipers with the paint that is left in the can while they are on the car in order to have enough, just covered other areas in trash bags, tape, newspaper. I then used a brush to get the areas that did not get sprayed well. It turned out well, still looks good. The front calipers are extremely easy as it is a large flat smooth surface that does not get very dirty, I cleaned with break cleaner, rubbing alcohol, toothbrush, and sanded it a little, they looked very nice after being sprayed. Rear calipers were a different story, they are a very rough finish, were filthy, hard to clean and difficult to tape areas off I did not want painted, took twice as long as the fronts. I sanded them more aggressively but it still was not making much difference.

Overall they turned out nice. I did not use clearcoat, I wish the copper was more of a metallic penny colored copper or reddish metallic copper as under some lighting and angles it looks more orangish/non metallic. I was thinking of mixing the silver and the copper together to get more of a metallic finish but it was turning more of a dark grey, dark grey metallic would have looked pretty cool though too.

Selahvie

I am planning the VHT Copper. I picked up two cans and the clear coat at Advance Auto. Good tips on the rears - I can already tell they will be more challenging than the fronts. Thank you for sharing your experience - that will definitely help me. How long would you both recommend waiting between coats?