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My first attempt at wrapping - LIME GREEN BMW 335D!



  Megane R26
Excuse the silver wing mirrors, skirts and roof - wheels are being painted too!


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DSC05056 by RussZS, on Flickr


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DSC05062 by RussZS, on Flickr


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DSC05072 by RussZS, on Flickr


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DSC05070 by RussZS, on Flickr


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DSC05077 by RussZS, on Flickr


Russ.
 
  Megane R26
Thank you :) We did it under tuition from one of the best in the country at his place in Mansfield.

It was a full strip first - this is the result of 3 days worth of work!!

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Untitled by RussZS, on Flickr
 

Rob

ClioSport Moderator
Wow. Very impressive indeed!

It's pretty damn hard work then? Does it work out, materials + time vs cost as well as detailing then? Can't imagine it does, but it's another string to your bow I guess?

As said, if you ever want another mule... y'know, just to test out your skills before you offer it as a service. :cheers:
 

Scrooge

ClioSport Moderator
  E55 AMG
Looks brilliant Russ!

I think I know the person you're talking about in Mansfield, his training courses look awesome!
 
  Megane R26
Rob we may just take you up on that offer but would need your car for a good 3 days...

Next up is my Golf Edition 30, a Clio 200, Audi A3 and a load of bonnets!

Pricing wise I think we need to start lowish as we're new to the market and build up a reputation - do it the same way as detailing. The problem is the film cost - so gloss white can be as cheap as £10 a metre, but something like this green is £25 and with 14m or so over a car, then labour for 2-3 days for 2 people, its never going to be cheap, but is of course a lot less than a full respray, plus protects your original paintwork from damage and abuse.
 

Waitey

ClioSport Club Member
  Alpina D3, AC Cobra
Good skills.

I loathe what they've done to that car though....
 
  Megane R26
We did it ourselves along with the owner of the car!

There's talk of a leather roof next.. It's partly Marketing of course as something which stands out - another white wrap wouldn't be very exciting
 

Gally

Formerly Mashed up egg in a cup
ClioSport Club Member
Stunning workmanship Russ, I can only begin to imagine how hard it is to do it right. Most poor wraps are caused by wrappers being too lazy to strip anything and just cut into edges.

Terrible colour but at least he went matte, gloss wraps just look so bad. Like Bmw orange people times a million, not a finish i'd want on my car.
 
  Transit & Death trap
then labour for 2-3 days for 2 people, its never going to be cheap, but is of course a lot less than a full respray, plus protects your original paintwork from damage and abuse.

Your comment above, surely it works out more expensive than a full respray in the end, if you're suggesting it's eventually removed having preserved the original paint, wouldn't you have to pay the same again (minus the vinyl costs) just for removal?
And is removal the same as installation, does the car have to be stripped down and what would the labour cost be for removal?

The car looks great by the way, not sure about the colour, but may work when something's done with the mirrors, skirts and wheels - Black maybe?
 

Gally

Formerly Mashed up egg in a cup
ClioSport Club Member
It definitely wouldn't cost 1k to remove it mate, it's just a foil. You might need a quick detail but still cheap.
 
  Megane R26
Stunning workmanship Russ, I can only begin to imagine how hard it is to do it right. Most poor wraps are caused by wrappers being too lazy to strip anything and just cut into edges.

Terrible colour but at least he went matte, gloss wraps just look so bad. Like Bmw orange people times a million, not a finish i'd want on my car.

Thanks Gally :)

We have a trick up our sleeves with the gloss stuff…
 
  Megane R26
Your comment above, surely it works out more expensive than a full respray in the end, if you're suggesting it's eventually removed having preserved the original paint, wouldn't you have to pay the same again (minus the vinyl costs) just for removal?
And is removal the same as installation, does the car have to be stripped down and what would the labour cost be for removal?

The car looks great by the way, not sure about the colour, but may work when something's done with the mirrors, skirts and wheels - Black maybe?

Removal requires a lot less time - maybe a single day and a light machine polish to remove any residue

A decent respray would be £2500-4000? Plus there are some films which you could never spray on, so it has its advantages. It won't be for everyone but it's definitely a growing market space.
 

Rob

ClioSport Moderator
Rob we may just take you up on that offer but would need your car for a good 3 days...

Next up is my Golf Edition 30, a Clio 200, Audi A3 and a load of bonnets!

Pricing wise I think we need to start lowish as we're new to the market and build up a reputation - do it the same way as detailing. The problem is the film cost - so gloss white can be as cheap as £10 a metre, but something like this green is £25 and with 14m or so over a car, then labour for 2-3 days for 2 people, its never going to be cheap, but is of course a lot less than a full respray, plus protects your original paintwork from damage and abuse.

It'd be no problem at all, plus you wouldn't need to wrap the roof. (Well you could, but I don't think it'd work) :D

The finish looks brilliant though, really. I'm surprised white is cheap compared with green, I thought just generic colours would be similar and maybe metallic effects or whatever would be where the money wars begin.
 

Knuckles

ClioSport Admin
Love it!

i know you were tutored but that's a brilliant first go!

did it take three days because you had other work on or was it half a day to take it apart, 2 days to wrap then half a day to put back together?
 
  Transit & Death trap
It definitely wouldn't cost 1k to remove it mate, it's just a foil. You might need a quick detail but still cheap.

Yeah, I wasn't too sure. Just thought I'd ask, seeing as it looks like a lot of time has to go into wrapping a car, naturally you'd expect it might take the same to remove it.
How long do you think it would take to remove then?
 
  Transit & Death trap
Removal requires a lot less time - maybe a single day and a light machine polish to remove any residue

A decent respray would be £2500-4000? Plus there are some films which you could never spray on, so it has its advantages. It won't be for everyone but it's definitely a growing market space.

Fair enough, that doesn't seem too bad.
What do cost would be involved with installing a wrap, then removing it, say on the BMW pictured? And also, what's the life span, thought it was only a few years?
 
  Megane R26
Love it!

i know you were tutored but that's a brilliant first go!

did it take three days because you had other work on or was it half a day to take it apart, 2 days to wrap then half a day to put back together?

It was three of us working on this with two tutors so pretty intensive for 3 days.

Taking it apart was about 3 hours - not as difficult as I'd assumed it would be, but this will obviously vary from car to car. We then spent some time on other films and colours practicing before starting to work on this as its over £20 per metre!

Doing it properly really does take time, as does cutting away from panel edges properly leaving enough film to wrap around the edge and critically doing so in a very straight and uniformed way. Then there's the smaller intricate bits which were all done perfectly such as the washer jet covers, tow bar covers, door handles (2 pieces), door shuts etc.

Sure, you can do a bonnet in under an hour, but they are extremely straight forward. Bits like the rear plate number recess were done in two parts - upper piece first (around the lighting for the plate) then the other piece covering the rest of that panel - you can't stretch it enough and keep it looking consistent to wrap into the entire recess. To then cut that overlap line over the underlying film (and of course paint) takes real precision and skill and can't be rushed.

Paul who trained us said he'd quote 2.5 days for this car normally and he's been doing it for 4 years.
 
  Megane R26
Fair enough, that doesn't seem too bad.
What do cost would be involved with installing a wrap, then removing it, say on the BMW pictured? And also, what's the life span, thought it was only a few years?

The Hexis film which we're pretty much exclusively going to be using is for 10 years - this is against film failure and colour degradation.

In terms of the install itself, this is largely down to the company doing it. I've seen some real bodged jobs in my time, with cuts being made into panels/clearcoat, cuts too short so that you can see the underlying colours on panel edges from where a company hasn't removed bumpers, wing mirrors etc and all sorts of other gremlins. There was a wrapped car on a famous tuning companies' stand at a big car show last year and you could SEE the tar of the lower half of the doors which hadn't been removed - anything we touch will have a FULL 'detailing decon' first - so IronX, Tardis, Clay then the relevant film makers prep product - without entirely clean paint, the film won't last long, especially around those critical panel edges and corners. The other key is cleanliness as the adhesive is built into the rear of the film and is statically charged, so ANYTHING between the peeled film and panel will get stuck to the film and can't easily be removed. Some people claim to wrap outdoors…!!

We have people near us doing 'full wraps' in 1 day for £650. You should see them after 6 months!!

I also now understand why nearly every carbon fibre effect roof or bonnet I've seen looks wonky - the amount of pulling and reforming
 

Gally

Formerly Mashed up egg in a cup
ClioSport Club Member
I seen a Gold Ed30 bonnet wrap in CF, it was amazing mate, it was shiny and had that kinda green weave through it. I honestly thought it was real. Amazing graphic they used.
 
  Megane R26
Was this the Hexis 30000 range Russ, Satin Kiwi?

Yep that's the one matey

Real thick material though so a difficult one to work with for our first attempt - the thinner stuff is much much easier to cut.

Things like the aerial took me about an hour to wrap perfectly. You lose so much time on small bits like that
 
  Megane R26
I seen a Gold Ed30 bonnet wrap in CF, it was amazing mate, it was shiny and had that kinda green weave through it. I honestly thought it was real. Amazing graphic they used.

Any pics please bud? It's difficult to find a nice carbon fibre material - the 3M one looks horrible and resembles poor uncoated CF. It's hard to find a reputable glossy CF which resembles clearcoated CF - it would look much, much better on most installs.
 

Gally

Formerly Mashed up egg in a cup
ClioSport Club Member
I'll try and dig out the guys number mate, it was honestly like proper bare weave that had been lacquered. I was actually going to image it and fire it up here just to show folk and forgot.

It was in for a wheel refurb and a few other bits and it really stood out against the Grey.

It was similar to this...

yellow%20carbon%20fiber%20kevlar%20panel.jpg


More than normal black carbon fibre.
 
  Megane R26
Did you get any pics of the trimmed edges like in the door shuts etc?

Yep I have hundreds of pics and will do a monster write up when the car is finished - over on DW.

One part that isn't possible to wrap is the door hinged area so that's still silver, but the rest of the sill area is now green
 


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