usinga wrap instead of paint?

[Monkey Wrench]

spoke ot a guy with an MG he said he was planning to wrap his car, rather than paint it and thet this is cheaper than paint.


is it a viable alternative? my 944 doesn't look so bad, but it has a lot f fade on one side but the other side has some sort of clearcoat. the clearcoat has ssome missing biuts but for the most part is more shiny. Ive been tryign to polish it with a cut polish wiht some results but it seems very slow going. maybe I shoudo buy a power buffer or somethign to cut polish with?

I bought another car, it is a volvo 122 from 66. it has very worn old faded, white paint and Im switchign doors and trunk and hood and its becoming all different colors. saving the paintjob on it seems impractical.

Ill need to do some spot painting in areas where the rust needs atention I thought maybe I should use epoxy where there is rust, inner feners, the firewall is very rusty biut not through, figured maybe some initial , rust amalgamator then whash with water, then epoxy then paint to the color I want after.

I do not see wrap working at all for the firewall for example, or the underside of the hood, or in the door jambs, or inside the trunk, but maybe for the flatter, outer body panels? outside of hood, doors etc,

so what If a car is wrapped , then paint damaged, is it repairable then?

soem areas have a little surface rust like fender lips, Id like to paint those problem areas in epoxy and then maybe primer the whole car prior to a wrap or final paint. Im thinknmg a high build primer, maybe I can use spray cans as I go towards a final prep?

is it practical to get epoxy in spray cans?
spraying the entire car in epoxy seems nice but maybe expensive for the product?

I do see the epoxy as a good basecoat over formerly rust pitted areas. it might help hld back any further issues.

I do not have a shop so Ill be working outdoors , at least until Im at the later stages orf prepering for paint, then maybe I can rent a booth and get a real paitner tto to do the final spray job. or go from primer to a wrap maybe?

has anyone else wrapped their car, and how did that work out?

maybe I can get a quart of white epoxy primer, Imron maybe? I have a small 100 dollar HPLV gun. not sure what size tip I should use. I have sprayed epoxy primer wiht it.

[962porsche]

wrapping a car has it's place at times.
after I closed up the restoration shop and then opened our race shop I did wrap cars for a few years for the people that raced.
if you wrap over any imperfection you will see it through the wrap.
a few problems with wraps is they are not a forever product to leave on a car. If you leave it on a car for to long it's will become total hell to remove.
There is also the fact that if the car gets damaged and you need to wrap a panel or more it may not match the original wrap in the car.
this happened to me on a few jobs. the same manufacture of the wrap and the same color number but from a different dye lot. the worse one was a BMW we did that the customer damaged the front end and the color was miles off after I re wrapped the nose. so far off I had to replace the wrap on the back half of the car also.

to wrap the inner panels of a car is not the best idea. it's best to just paint them.

using a primer with out a top coat ( paint ) over it is not a good idea. primers are not designed to hold out moisture so it will rust under the primer unless you paint a top coat over it.

[mepstein]

My friend bought the material and paid his neighbors high school kid $500 to wrap his car. It was in primer and he wanted it to look good for an event. Was it a pro level job-no. Did it look great- yes. A whole lot better than a mat grey blob. I think the decals break up the panels and take your eyes away from parts that might show ripples or runs in the primer.
Like anything, proper prep is 95% of the job.

[Dpmulvan]

Who is the best source for wrap? 3m?

[Monkey Wrench]

mybe the wraps are good on glass? I can see the 944 having a problem due to the great big back window being about the same height as the headlights in a lot of pickups etc. nowadays a lot of people are "upgrding" to these crazy blinding LED setups.

[962porsche]

we uses 3M wrap material the most some times a customer would pick a color from Dennison color book we had so we would also use them. Dennison had more color options than 3M the quality between the two were about the same . the reason why we tended to go with 3M more was they would get us the vinyl with in a few days after the order was placed Dennison would take about a week to get our order to us.