Yes, I wrapped my car!

A few years ago I decided to wax my car and grabbed a container of wax from the pantry, glopped it on the hood, and started buffing. It turns out that very OLD car wax can act like a paint stripper! I learned that lesson the hard way.

I REALLY love my car. Yes, it’s old and goofy looking and was a super cheap car even brand new, but it is the best car I’ve ever owned. And for the last couple years I’ve had to tolerate looking at the nasty hood of my darling XB and it drove me bonkers.  In addition to the messed up white snurge, there were also oodles of paint chips, one sizeable ding, and TONS of pine sap from all the trees in our yard.

Here is a pic of what my lovely little baby looked like before I wrapped it. I wish I had a picture of it when it wasn’t quite so dirty and dusty so you could see just how bad the hood was compared to the rest of the paint job, but take my word for it–it was bad.

Hey look, there’s Rover!

(In the background you can see my other boxy car. Yes, I like boxy vehicles.)

Here are some closer pics. You can see that it is worse on one side of the hood than the other because I started on one quadrant of the hood and immediately stopped when I saw the wax was basically stripping off the paint.

And a REALLY close up picture of the worst damage around one of the window spray nozzles. See how chalky and white it looks?

Isn’t that terrible?! Honestly, never use old car wax!!

The quote for getting the hood alone wrapped was $1000, which actually sounded pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, I’d have to drive it all the way to Albuquerque (3 hours each way), leave it for two weeks, and then drive all the way down to Albuquerque again to collect it. What a pain.

So, I decided to watch some videos and see just what it took to wrap a hood.

It turns out that it is pretty much exactly what you’d think. You get a big piece of vinyl and stick it onto your car, making sure to avoid air bubbles or getting anything stuck between the vinyl and the car.

I thought to myself: “I can do that!”

I looked at a bunch of different vinyl websites and eventually made my choice based on ease of uploading a photo of what I wanted. I found the vinyl seller on Etsy. Although they are located in China they offered expedited shipping (because I wanted it NOW, damnit!) and they had a really fast turn around time and were able to lure me in by showing me my design on a car just like mine! What can I say, I’m easy that way.

Oh, here are the tools I ordered. Most of the stuff came in a little wrap kit that only cost about $10. The only tools I really used out of the kit were the squeegie, microfiber cloth, the gloves, and the xacto knife. All those red platistic tucking tools really weren’t necessary.

I also ordered heavy duty magnets. Although I only needed to use them for about 5 minutes I’d say they were pretty critical to the beginning wrap process. But if you have a second person helping you then you might be able to get by without buying any of them.

I had two weeks before the vinyl arrived to get to work and do some serious prepping on my hood.

First, I took out my trusty Makita 5 inch orbital sander, slapped a 240 grit on it, and commenced sanding. Mr. Spencer came outside to see what all the racket was about, saw me grinding away on the hood with a cloud of dust all around me, and said, “Welp, I guess we’re committed to vinyling the hood now…”

My most nervous moment was removing the windshield wiper nozzles. For some reason, I thought it would be a PITA, but it was a cinch. They just unplug from a small hose, you squeeze two clips, and pull them out of the hood and voila!

I sanded the whole hood, some parts down to the metal and had to buy some Bondo to fix a sizeable ding. I started with 240 grit and used several finer grits, ending with 1500.

Here is a pic of how it looked after I finished sanding down the worst of the chips, etc. You can see I had to take it down to the metal in several areas.

(I won’t add pics for the next few steps because the pictures are super boring and don’t really show much)

After I sanded out all the chips and dings and fixed one bad ding with Bondo, I primed it and then sanded it again.

I used onxy blue Scion paint from the dealership and sprayed the hood. Then I sanded it again.

Then I sprayed on a clear coat.

And after that I had a beer and celebrated being done with the sander!

I was still enjoying my beer when I spoke to my mom on the phone and she said, “I think you should sand it again and give it a second layer of clear coat.”

Aaarrrgh! I did not like her suggestion AT ALL, but I slept on the idea and decided she was right. Although the hood was pretty smooth, it was probably worth the effort to make it even smoother.

So after one last sanding with 1500 and one more layer of clear coat, it was about as good as it would get. I was very happy with the lack of dings/chips/etc. Unfortunately, my diy paint job was nothing like a factory job and I worried that might matter when it came to adhesion.

All the videos I watched show guys putting vinyl on cars that look brand new. Would vinyl stick to a paint job that wasn’t super glossy?

I am extremely happy to report that, Yes! if your car has been prepped and is smooth and clean, a car does not need to have a brand new factory paint job to make vinyl stick.

Anyhow, I’m getting ahead of myself; back to the application process.

Mr. Spencer helped me unwrap the vinyl and stretch it over the hood. Because we did this outside, and it was a bit windy, we had to be vigilant to make sure that no leaves, feathers, bugs got between the car and the vinyl.

The initial stretching was kind of a pain and at first I was afraid to stretch the vinyl tight, worrying I’d tear it. That didn’t happen. This was some thick stuff and I ended up getting more comfortable with yanking on it. It probably took 5 hours from start to finish. I was truly worried when I reached the bottom part of the hood and it seemed like there was WAY too much vinyl bunched up. That is when my trusty heat gun came into play!

A heat gun is IMPERATIVE for doing a wrap. I think even a high powered hair dryer would help. As soon as you heat the vinyl it not only becomes more pliable, but it shrinks to fit. What a relief. Nothing I watched online really explained how critical a heat gun is.

Anyhow, once I started with the gun things went a lot faster.

You smooth it out, cut off all but about 1/4 inch, and then tuck that underneath the hood and heat gun the hell out of it again. I had to reposition some of the under the hood edges and MAN does that stuff stick to the painted metal. It was very hard to pull it up and reposition it again, so I’m hoping the vinyl will stay stuck.

I am SO IMPRESSED by the quality of this vinyl and how nicely it adhered to the hood.

Are you ready to see the final result??

Ha! Weren’t expecting chickens, were you? LOL. Yes, it’s a crazy wrap, but I figured why the hell not? And it makes me smile.

If you are pondering doing something fun with your car and have a little time and a lot of patience, I highly recommend giving wrapping a shot.

Incidentally, every single time I did anything on the car my goose Pickles came rushing over to see what I was doing. She loves looking at her reflection in the car (yes, it is sometimes clean enough to see a reflection, lol) and considers the car HERS.

Here are some pics of her guarding the car.

she decided that sleeping beside it was necessary.

And here she is making sure that I wash the rims VERY CAREFULLY.

Thankfully she’s not tall enough to see that chickens, instead of geese, grace the hood!