Most affordable option to purchase Car Wrap Vinyl?
 

Just wondering, those with experience purchasing and wrapping their own car, what is the best route to take to purchase car vinyl?

Is it worth the hassle to purchase it online and pick it up from PR/Blaine?

Or would it be easier to just purchase it through a local vendor? If so, which vendor offers the most competitive pricing?

Thanks!

I've bought a couple rolls of vinyl for trims, lights, small exterior parts and etc and they used to be at least 25% cheaper for every type of vinyl but now CAD sucks so it's about the same... unless local vendors increased their prices too.

I'm definitely going to have to inquire and compare pricing with the exchange rate!

Did you purchase it through ebay/amazon? or from the actual Brand makers (3M, Avery, Hexis)?

I don't know about now with the exchange rate, but online suppliers used to be the cheaper route.

Make sure you get the real shit though, don't buy cheap china vinyl, it's not the same.

Also I don't know what you are trying to do, but buy lots of extra vinyl. Not just in case you fuck up a couple panels, but also in case you have to re-do a panel in the future cause of an accident or whatever.

Vinyl, just like paint, not batch comes out exactly the same. So buying a larger roll means if you have to re-do panels in the future they will match perfectly.

thinking about wrapping my car and DIY it!

If you have a cheap old car or would want to wrap random parts, definitely go with the Chinese stuff, a 20ft roll of ok-quality vinyl will cost you about $350-400 + shipping. I helped a friend to wrap his old corolla using Matt Pearl White, it turns out to be okay, except when we stretch the vinyl, the edge is likely to peel off after a week.

We have no concern on the colour match, just make sure the roll has no printing lines on the product.

i purchased mine off of ebay from vvivid vinyls. they are based out of Montreal and their vinyl is 75% quality of the top brands from my playing around with various samples. it was basically best bang for buck i could find. you can see the details of my experience here including costs: Vinyl wrapped my whole car - 3000GT/Stealth International Message Center
i had it shipped to my door for cheap, missed the delivery guy and picked it up from DHL in richmond

sweet!
Thanks Reza, i'll definitely take a look on ebay as well. I will have an extra set of hands to help me out too, so I hope it can speed up the process. I would also be taking it a panel a day, just like how you did too. Since my car is a convertible, the time should be slightly less than your car too.
What did you use to prep/clean the surfaces before applying the vinyl?

Purchased through ebay because their customer satisfaction guarantee is too good, I've only used metrorestyling and vvivid.

If it's going to be exterior wrapping, name brands like 3M is required imo. China vinyls are usually easier to work with, maybe because they are thinner which means they are also easier to tear.

Some high quality stuff from vvivid is extremely hard to bend and stretch.

3M, Hexis, Avery, Arlon. Stick to those brands. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't handled cheap china vinyl immediately beside the good stuff.

If you are going to do this, do it right. If you plan on buying cheap china vinyl you might as well just dip the car. (which at that point I would have called you and screamed for even thinking about doing to your car... :D )

You don't need to do anything too special to prep the surfaces of the car, wash the car with dish soap to get all the wax off the car, clay any areas that are kinda rough, then wipe each panel down with 70% iso before wrapping it. Make sure to wipe down the edges of each panel thoroughly.

I presume you are doing the E46. Honestly that's a bit of a bitch of a car to wrap. Door moldings, complicated multi directional hood, deep insets in the front and rear bumper, lines in the quarters, etc. Only saving grace is the fact that the car is relatively small, and the fact that it is a convertible so you don't have to do the roof and pillars.




EDIT:

Oh and for tools:

-quality heat gun
-a quality set of exacto knives (princess auto has a nice kit with tons of awesome blades and stuff for 10 bucks)
-A full set of panel removal tools (princess auto has a 5 piece set for like 10 bucks)
-A couple of squeegees (one rubber and one felt, N-motion for like 15 bucks)
-Basic mechanic tool set (screwdrivers, and sockets)

Other than that it's just blood, sweat and tears. Oh and you can lure some buddies with some beer.

Perfect, thanks brotha. Your post covers pretty much all the questions that I had! Now time to get some samples to see which colour I am going to go with.

Time to swing by MM-Designs?

I hear they have all the favourite Richmond colours...:lawl:

http://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/imag...deadmau5_2.jpg

Perhaps this design would work? Also consider changing your plates to M3OW :troll:

Then ill fit right in with the rest of them :troll: , except my car isnt an exotic lol. I'll be a peasant in their eyes.

is this for the 996 :o

FYI, I would never have my car wrapped again. After a week of wrapping my g35, I decided that it was time to sell the car :P I probably would've kept the car if I painted instead of wrapping the entire body kit.

So just a warning that you MIGHT get sick of looking at your car. Car looks fake and only under certain lighting do the matte finish look good, 90% of the time they look "cheap".

I didn't cheap out on choosing a good wrapping company (don't want to expose their company, and no I didn't choose hurp durp design) but there were many corners/edges/bends that started bubbling/peeling/wrinkling after a couple weeks. Those spots had to get touched up every couple of weeks. There were shitloads of exotics in their portfolio so I trusted them :(

On top of that you need to keep the car extra clean as dirt + rain ends up as water spot stains that are usually extremely difficult to get rid of perfectly (either end up polishing the matte finish or they just don't come out). Car was wrapped almost 4 years ago, maybe they have better solutions now.

Rock chips and retarded drivers who swing their doors wide open will pierce the vinyl. Only way to fix that is to rewrap the entire panel but after a period of time, like paint, the vinyl colours/finish change slightly.

If you're really going to wrap the car, go with satin finish wraps... they actually look nice.

Too many matte cars in vancouver, especially the nasty ass black plasti-dipped ones with no gloss coats that are now looking almost brown and grey or those matte pink/chrome purple bs.

Jmanhas latest pic of whip?
http://www.carnewschina.com/wp-conte...a-1.jpg?97ba00

haha we will see! Once i check it out.

As for the wrap, I'm thinking about the gloss Avery Intense Blue or 3M Intense Blue. I know that it won't be 100% as glossy as actual paint, but I hear the gloss wraps are really hard to tell.

I came across this link when searching gloss wrap blues, and someone locally with a 993 posted up some detailed pics of his wrap.
I think it looks pretty amazing and honestly can't tell that it is vinyl.

Pro's & Cons of getting my car WRAPPED ?? - Rennlist Discussion Forums

:heckno::heckno: :ohgodwhy:

I smh everytime i pass by one of those cars in Richmond, which is pretty much daily lol

Thanks bro for the insight! That's actually one of the reasons why I don't want to get a matte finish because of the extensive upkeep thats required. I'm hoping that by doing it myself, I can repair/replace any wrap on the panels if it does get pierced open. I am expecting at least 2-3 weeks to complete the wrap if i tackle 1-2 Panels a day!

Nice, I was thinking of wrapping that colour as well when I saw this pic but I didn't want to risk getting headaches again xD.

3M (some custom ordered blue, says similar to intense blue)
http://i60.tinypic.com/1040wex.jpg

that's the exact blue that i want!

Helped out a friend wrap his gt3000. It wasnt that bad except he kepted on smoking abd wasting time...instead of finishing in 4 days...after a year he still not done...I recommend u do the job with soneone who cares about details...bc if u dont taje tge time to do it right it does look cheap closeup

I always wonder if the owners that vinyl wrap their cars with these designs, do they change their car colour description on their icbc insurance papers?

If so, I wonder what do they put for a design like that.