Vinyl Wrapping your 986

[Nine8Six]

OP For your wrap DIY I can't imagine this costing more than $100~$200 worth of materials if you go for a flat black paper anyway. FLaT black it-will-be, that is the question I would ask myself before cracking on a project like that

Flat black wrap would look absolutely stunning onto let's say a seriously modded boxster S or something like that e.g. low stance, aftermarket wheels, tinted windows, you see where I'm getting at.

Flat black for a stock looking "Porsche Boxster" as we know and appreciate it? hmmm not so sure

DIY... I'd like to think that anyone who've enjoyed his/her high school's Arts & Crafts classes should have great fun wrapping their own car. The paper thing just flex in every directions when blown as little as 35degree. Beside, at that price I can't see anything going horribly wrong! Just a FAB weekend ahead

Even myself could wrap a car :troll:

Talk to chaps like this megastore below, their items looks fairly priced. Compared to what it cost at this end anyway... which is not much more lower.
Width 1520mm 4.99ft 59.8 in, List For 21 Colours And Sizes items in CarcarStyleLimited store on eBay!

HAVE FUN!!! + pics pics pics

[jb92563]

Particle, that chrome green is calling out to you. A match made in heaven really.

Shiny is always good at a most primitive level somewhere in the back primordial regions of your brain. Like everyday is Christmas, can't help but smile when you see it.

I don't get the black hood thing at all on a non race car. Reminds me of a trailer park Honda Accordion with a coffee can muffler and dented bumpers and doors...pathetic and ugly. I guess I see too much of those around here and feel like this area needs a good nuking to get rid of all the old thrashed junk cars.

I don't think folks should be discouraged from trying a wrap DIY because if you F'...up you can just peel it off an try again.

For $300 - $600 in materials you don't have much to loose and you can do your mailbox with the scraps .

I wonder how the wrap does out in Arizona on 115 F days in the sun?

Maybe some day I'll try a chrome wrap.


Here's a green one for Particle...sorry bout the water though. I think wraps are water proof though right?

[batshapedheart]

Originally Posted by JayG

well for starters, you would have to ship your car to England

They have partners in the US. They pointed me to a place when I inquired about having my calipers -yes, CALIPERS- wrapped in light reflective material.
Just shoot them an email.

[Pdwight]

If they made a material that would hold up for calipers I would buy it.....but I would need to see proof . Now a Caliper is something I would attempt to wrap myself......I used to build RC Aircraft and covered the wood frames so it could not be that different.

[myn8m3is8ndy]

If i successfully wrap my car, then I'll have a matte black boxster with a blue soft top...... Anyway to change my blue soft top color to black without replacing it??

[Pdwight]

You could try some carpet dye

[jamesatfish]

I love vinyl wraps - our company cars are yellow which is a horrid colour for resale (in a van or hatchback) so we buy whatever colour is cheapest off the lot and wrap them.

As a result I've had our signwriters wrap a couple of non-work cars when I felt like a colour change. It's a cheap way to get a brand new lease of life on a car and is easily removed when the time comes.

For those contemplating a DIY wrap, take a look at the time involved in doing a professional job before you determine if it's worth paying someone to do it for you. The last personal car I had wrapped took 80 man hours - 4 guys working 2x 10 hour days. The results were fantastic but I'd hate to have tried to do the job myself.

Gallardo Vinyl Wrap Timelapse - YouTube

[doctorm3]

WOW! that's a lot of work! spectacular result!

[patssle]

I stood next to a 928 that had been professionally wrapped. With my eyeballs 3 ft away or less...I could tell it was a wrap. But more than 3 ft.....can't tell if it's paint or vinyl. Is the cost of a paint job worth that 3 feet? That's what I'll be asking myself when I make a decision after my 914-6 conversion is done.

[Xpit77]

Like this ?

[Xpit77]

Or this ?

[Joe B]

I did some searching and came up with $2-4,000 to have a car professionally vinyl wrapped. Does this sound about right? Doesn't sound any cheaper than a paint job !

[Pdwight]

Back in my previous career the company I worked for sold large format printers (Mimaki Indigo etc) and I saw wraps just starting way back, I always thought if it could be done without printed text for $500 it would be the wave of the future for autos...however when you get into 4K territory that is a pretty good paint job. I would rather have the paint job.

[Nine8Six]

I don't get it, it cost $500 and takes half day for 2 (two) skinny dudes to wrap a small/medium car here. Seen/heard it many times.....

What am I missing?!

[Pdwight]

8 years ago the material cost about double what Silver based Photo paper cost, average car $100 in materials (not printed)...perhaps this will go way down when more folks start to do it. I remember when window tinting cost $250 (think 1978) now you can get it done for what in 1978 dollars would be $25

[JayG]

Originally Posted by Nine8Six

I don't get it, it cost $500 and takes half day for 2 (two) skinny dudes to wrap a small/medium car here. Seen/heard it many times.....

What am I missing?!

Location, Location, Location

[papasmurf]

depending on vehicle. To do a good job (seamless as possible) you will wind up wasting some material on some vehicles. The car really needs to be spotless before it is brought in to wrap and can easily take an hour at the car wash scrubbing away sap, bugs, and road tar. If you want the best job, you have to think about removing antenna's, weatherstripping, moulding, door handles, headlights etc. Now think about the time to remove those things, and all the old brittle plastic clips you have to carefully pry off to remove those parts (ex: door panels) and you can see where you can easily spend half a day or more removing body parts just to get started. We can easily spend 2-3 days on average wrapping a car with 2-3 people. The most complex wrap we ever did was on a lifted F-250 and took close to 2 weeks, but it did look like a show vehicle when done. If you stretch the material too much or overheat it, it will discolor it not to mention the satin, chrome, and matte finishes will turn shiny if you rub on them too hard during installation or overheat them....panel ruined. The materials are not too expensive (except for the carbon fiber, metals, and chrome) but the labor is a lot more intense than most people realize. If it was me, I would probably spend my 4k on a paint job before I got a wrap but what you can get with a wrap can be near impossible to duplicate with any paint job regardless of price.

[jamesatfish]

As papasmurf mentioned it all depends on what sort of job you're after.

For our work cars they're usually wrapped and sign written within a day. They'll cut around door handles (leaving the paint colour visible under the handle), cut and overlap sections to avoid tricky folds, tuck edges in around light clusters and so on. In those instances it's a 90% job we are after - most people will just see the cars from a distance and after a few weeks in the hands of an employee they're covered with dirt and crud anyway.



For personal cars they take a lot more time in preparing both the surfaces and the vinyl. They'll remove badges, lights, grilles etc so the vinyl edges are well hidden behind those items once replaced, they wrap behind door handles and cut holes for mirrors so the door panels don't have any visible joins.

The slats on the Gallardo for example were all disassembled from the car and individually wrapped on both sides before being re-assembled. Each one took about 30 minutes for that whole process, and there are 26 slats across the engine cover and rear quarter panels.



The finish on the Gallardo was such that most people assumed it had been painted that colour - there were no obvious joins that suggested it was a vinyl wrap, but obviously if you touched the panels or looked very closely you'd notice it wasn't a painted finish.

[Nine8Six]

I've looked into getting my 986 chrome wrapped in red at many occasions. Spoke to a lot of car owners who also got theirs wrapped and literally seen hundreds in parking lots, at the circuits, here and there.

Knowing that this stuff will eventually need complete removal, may peal under weather conditions, etc, to me 4K seems a little stiff :/

[papasmurf]

4k is what it would cost to typically wrap a large truck or SUV (all of it). We wrapped an F-250 four door with a camper a few months back and it was $3800. The chrome wraps for a car will likely push you to the 4k range and beyond if they are using one of the major brands of vinyl. The edges of the wrap peeling back are due to either the edges not being prepped (degreased and primer applied), sealed, cheap vinyl with weaker adhesive, or they stretched/overheated the vinyl during the installation. Yeah...I guess if you take the car off-roading or down a bunch of gravel roads it would start to eat away at the wrap but I can't see a paint job faring much better. Maybe it is just the labor in China that is so cheap but there is no where in the states that would touch a wrap for those prices. There are lots of places springing up left and right trying to get in on this business and people trying to do it out of their homes. We have people come in routinely that complain about our competition from time to time. There really is a learning curve to how you can heat and stretch the vinyl to get around corners without wrinkles and without compromising the installation long term.