Ratchey

I know many on here are purists and won't care for the look, but I really wanted a blue car and love this particular look when the sun hits it just right. It's called Satin Perfect Blue by 3M, with the trim pieces wrapped in Matte Metallic Gray by Oracal. The process took about 4 days including stripping down the car and wrapping all of the small pieces like the door handles and such. Haven't wrapped a car in many years and never used this material before so there was a steep learning curve. Small parts are time consuming, with the rear chrome piece taking 90 minutes and nearly 2 hours to complete the spoiler. Even the logo took a half an hour and I still need to redo it.
We did cool details like wrapping the side mirrors in Matte Metallic Gray with Matte Black facing the inside to emulate the look of the shift ****.
But over all the car came out looking really nice in my opinion. And it was a fun, if not extremely time consuming project.
Still considering wrapping the front grill chrome trim and the window chrome trim. These as well, will be very time consuming pieces but I can work on these at my leisure.
I welcome all opinions and comments.

Ratchey

A few more pics of the process...

Boomin

I like it! congrats

Mike728

Although, I would never consider that look for my car, the quality looks impeccable. Congrats on making your ES unique and more enjoyable for you!

jollick

Looks like the wrap is perfect, not my style but great job. Congratulations.

JDR76

Very unique! Congratulations on making it your own and on the high quality workmanship.

gmanusmc

Can't imagine doing something like that to our Atomic Silver but looks like you did a fantastic job. Great work!

azipod

Just curious -- how much does wrapping the entire car like that cost?

I've always thought about wrapping the front grill fins, front bumper center, and the roof panel black.

E46CT

Looks really good. I actually like it! you changed just the color of the car. Still looks nice. Most people do that AND try to go aggressive and tacky and paint everything else black, large wheels, slammed etc

Ratchey

Depends on the shop and level of detail. My friend who helped me with the wrap said he would charge about $3500 for the wrap. I would imagine it could run $2500 - $5000 depending on what you were looking for on a complete wrap.

TechNut

Agreed. I might add that the color is really amazing, I just don't think I would enjoy the matte finish myself. Nicely done though.

5Ws

Man that looks good. I can't even get all the fingers out of the clear bra I installed.

Very unique. Nice pics.

RIchard

zes

It looks beautiful.

How durable is a wrap like that? Also how does it hold up against small rocks and stuff that inevitably make small dings and scratches on paint?

Also if the car is parked under hot sun, can the wrap bubble up in places?

I had a clear bra put on my vehicle and it already has little tears where the rocks and stones thrown up by tires of other traffic have hit it.

Ratchey

Wrapping vinyl is very thin. It is just as susceptible to many of the issues that can damage paint. I already have a small chip or two as I was sand blasted by a couple of semis in the last few miles of my trip. The car in front of me was only passing them at about 2 mph faster so got stuck in the damage zone for way longer that I wanted. It can also be damaged by things containing ammonia like bugs and bird droppings, so those should be cleaned off as soon as possible. Satin and Matte finished are more susceptible to these because of the finish, just as Satin and Matte paints would be. Printed graphics can be more durable as they will generally have a UV Laminate placed over them prior to wrapping. The material is also thicker because of the lamination.

Some wrapping vinyls have self healing properties similar to what our cars have. If left in the sun or under the heat of a heat gun, many fine scratches will fill themselves in. A properly installed wrap will not bubble in the heat. I wrapped the hood of my 4Runner in the same Matte Charcoal Gray I used on the trim and mirrors. I had a thick piece of vinyl underneath in the shape of the TEQ logo (the original Toyota logo) Because we completely sealed the wrap to the logo edges, even when I was driving around and parked in Vegas in 115+ degree heat, I never had one bubble show up. If the vinyl has not been squeegeed down properly and there is still some air trapped under the adhesive, it will bubble up in the sun. You can either try to work the bubble out, or if there is enough air trapped, you pierce the bubble with a needle, evacuate the air and reset the adhesive.

With your clear bra, it is doing what it is supposed to do, It is taking the damage so the paint won't have to. Clear bra is about 3 to 5 times thicker than wrapping vinyl so it takes the rock hit damage a lot better. If you live in a snowy area when they sand the roads in winter, I would still recommend putting clear bra on a wrap. If your true goal is to stop any paint damage to the front, the only truly effective product would be truck bed liner. It is effective up to about a 6mph hit into a wall. But you will not be removing that at any point after installation.

Overall, a wrap in installed to change the look of a vehicle or advertise a business or product. It's secondary benefit will be to protect the paint from sun and contaminate damage. To a lesser degree it will protect it from small rock chips. When I pull the vinyl off in 2 to 5 years, the paint will look exactly as it did when I installed it.

Ratchey

Did you install the clear bra wet or dry? It takes a lot of heat and a lot of patience to install those. Because of how thick the vinyl is, it is difficult to work with on curved surfaces. We put a piece of clear bra on the front logo. Because it is convex, the clear bra wouldn't stay flat, It developed several fingers that wanted to stay up. We installed wet, and then applied the soapy water to the outside as we pressed with a silicone squeegee. We worked the water out from underneath then applied a lot of heat. That softened the clear bra and allowed it to conform better, We let it dry for about an hour then went back over it with the heat gun and a lubricated squeegee until the last of the fingers finally stuck down.

Time, patience and a lot of heat are your friends.