Wrap Alternative to Paint

[Bob Bidonde]

Has anyone had their Model "A" wrapped instead of painting it?

[History]

Awesome question, potential here.

[duke36]

See attached image. Wrapping can be cheaper, but substrate (paint) needs to be almost perfect to not have imperfections telegraph thru. We were considering a chrome wrap for some exotic bumpers and wrap is great if one wants to change colors as on race cars, advertizing, etc.

[pgerhardt]

No, but I thought that a clear wrap might be good to protect the undersides of fenders.
Yes-No??

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Originally Posted by duke36

See attached image. Wrapping can be cheaper, but substrate (paint) needs to be almost perfect to not have imperfections telegraph thru. We were considering a chrome wrap for some exotic bumpers and wrap is great if one wants to change colors as on race cars, advertizing, etc.

FWIW, since I field both of my son's race cars here, I have a fairly good handle on what wrapping costs us, and I guess my opinion would be different. As suggested above, it is all in the surface, and the cost of paintwork on vehicles is in the straightening and substrate work but even then, the going rate for designed & printed vinyl is about $7.00-8.00 a square foot not installed. If we were to use Bob's Victoria as an example, my rough guess is that it would take somewhere around 110-120 square feet to do the sheetmetal, and that comes in at around $1,000. I can buy a 'middle of the road' paint for about 25% less.

Where the biggest benefits to using vinyl comes in is when you are doing unique & detailed artwork on vehicles like in the pictures of our race cars below. It lets us have unique designs & graphics that are repeatable in a rush. For example, we can knock the whole right-side sheetmetal off of the car on a Saturday night, and on Monday morning we can order all of the R/S panel graphics we need, have it printed & delivered on Wednesday and installed onto the new sheetmetal later that day. That would be near impossible to pull-off using paints. My personal take on wraps for Model-As is just stick with spray paints.


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Originally Posted by pgerhardt

No, but I thought that a clear wrap might be good to protect the undersides of fenders.
Yes-No??

Nahh not really. What causes chips on the bottom of fenders is too much primer build-up. Vinyl won't help that a bit.

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[Bob Bidonde]

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Thanks all for your replies.