Never Again - Vinyl Wrap

T

TitanFlyer

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Oct 30, 2022
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52
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Charlotte NC
Just mostly venting here, but NEVER buy a jeep (or any car) with a vinyl wrap on it, even one that is fairly fresh. The guy who did this wrap took everything off the jeep and then vinyl wrapped it completely, so now I have to remove all the hardware (hinges on hood and windshield, fender flairs, rock sliders, light surrounds, hood latches…. EVERYTHING) and use steam to warm up the vinyl to remove it in anything bigger than an square inch a at a time. Then I have to deal with the glue residue.

Bonus is that the paint underneath looks like it has never seen the light of day.

Any hints or tips would be much appreciated. I contacted several wrap places in town and none of them want to do the work unless they are putting a new wrap on it.

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Well, it looks good if that's the wrap. I'm kinda glad you posted this. I'm interested in hearing people's experience with wraps, which are becoming more and more popular. I was thinking of using it on armor.
 
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Yep, thats the wrap. Excellent job who ever did it, but its been on too long and is brittle.

If you look at the front grill in the first picture, the jeep is white, which i wanted.
 
TitanFlyer said:
Yep, thats the wrap. Excellent job who ever did it, but its been on too long and is brittle.

If you look at the front grill in the first picture, the jeep is white, which i wanted.
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Is that spot where you tried to remove the wrap? I don't see that spot on the other picture. It does look pretty good - are you sure the paint underneath is in good shape?
 
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I have my own wrapping business.

I would ditch the steamer and use a heat gun. In my experience a steamer is faster taking the vinyl off, but it will cause the adhesive to separate from the vinyl leaving more glue behind. Glue is worse than vinyl to remove.

Use a decent heat gun, if it was a quality wrap media it should come off pretty quick without leaving a ton of glue behind.

Who ever did the wrap did it the right way pulling parts… done right, but will take more effort to remove.

It does look like the wrap is lifting near the cowl on that hard body line.

Pray to god he didn’t use 3M primer 94, it’s an adhesion promoter used before you lay down the wrap on tricky body lines. Makes the vinyl very hard to get off.

A quality wrap media should leave very little glue behind, but you will have some. I would try and get a quality adhesive remover. I use Rapid Remover, which might be hard to find. If you got to an auto body supply house they will typically have a good remover.

Any other questions fire away.
 
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One last thing. When I do removals I typically charge by the hour with an estimated time.

It tricky to price it out… but in your case I would say I could have it fully stripped and cleaned up in about 6hrs. Depending how easy hinges and other things he went under came off…
 
2001slvrstntj said:
Exactly, what will you find under the wrap. Usually done for some reason other than just to change the color.
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In my experience this is not true. Very rarely do I wrap a vehicle that has body issues, if I do I will not give any kind of warranty.

90% of the vehicles I wrap are brand new.

I’m not saying there are not hacks out there, but a vinyl wrap will not hide paint flaws or other body issues very well, if anything it can highlight them.
 
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Superjay5 said:
In my experience this is not true. Very rarely do I wrap a vehicle that has body issues, if I do I will not give any kind of warranty.

90% of the vehicle I wrap are brand new.

I’m not saying there are not hacks out there, but a vinyl wrap will not hide paint flaws or other body issues very well, if anything it can highlight them.
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Makes sense I guess, needs to be clean/smooth to look good in the end. Thanks for the insight.
 
The paint underneath is perfect, at least the third of the jeep I have seen so far. It is leaving a lot of glue behind, especially around tricky spots like door latches etc. I would suspect they used some form of adhesive promoter there, cause its thick and tough to get off. I am using both Rapid Remover and 3M adhesive remover, and its coming off perfectly, but its a lot of work. I have 5-6 hours into it already myself, but I am old and lazy and take a lot of breaks, plus I don’t know what I am doing. I have one of the car kids (its a thing) in the neighborhood coming over tomorrow to help take a lot of the bigger lower down stuff off the jeep.
 
Superjay5 said:
I have my own wrapping business.

I would ditch the steamer and use a heat gun. In my experience a steamer is faster taking the vinyl off, but it will cause the adhesive to separate from the vinyl leaving more glue behind. Glue is worse than vinyl to remove.

Use a decent heat gun, if it was a quality wrap media it should come off pretty quick without leaving a ton of glue behind.

Who ever did the wrap did it the right way pulling parts… done right, but will take more effort to remove.

It does look like the wrap is lifting near the cowl on that hard body line.

Pray to god he didn’t use 3M primer 94, it’s an adhesion promoter used before you lay down the wrap on tricky body lines. Makes the vinyl very hard to get off.

A quality wrap media should leave very little glue behind, but you will have some. I would try and get a quality adhesive remover. I use Rapid Remover, which might be hard to find. If you got to an auto body supply house they will typically have a good remover.

Any other questions fire away.
Click to expand...

A side question, but I'd like to know what you think about wrapping body armor, in my case, corner armor. I have painted parts of the tub and armor before and only once did I get very good results (almost as good as factory and I can't tell without looking at the reflection closely), but it is very laborious to prep, prime, and paint, especially aluminum. I was thinking I could wrap it for much cheaper and it would look perfect in the flame red gloss. If I hit the armor, I hit the armor, same thing would happen if painted. I'd have to repaint it or just leave it, so I thought wrapping it would be easier and look better. Thoughts? I know it lasts only 5-7 years (correct me if I'm wrong), but mine lives in the garage and I figured it wouldn't hurt to try.
 
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TitanFlyer said:
The paint underneath is perfect, at least the third of the jeep I have seen so far. It is leaving a lot of glue behind, especially around tricky spots like door latches etc. I would suspect they used some form of adhesive promoter there, cause its thick and tough to get off. I am using both Rapid Remover and 3M adhesive remover, and its coming off perfectly, but its a lot of work. I have 5-6 hours into it already myself, but I am old and lazy and take a lot of breaks, plus I don’t know what I am doing. I have one of the car kids (its a thing) in the neighborhood coming over tomorrow to help take a lot of the bigger lower down stuff off the jeep.
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I believe you are correct, adhesive primers are usually used around door handles and such. It’s a pain to get off.

If you have some stubborn area of adhesive to get off, one trick is to hold a paper towel against that area and soak it with the remover. The remover will cause it to cling to that spot and stay there. The paper towel will hold the remover longer and will really loosen up the glue

When you just spray the remover, half of it just runs down the vehicle. The paper towel traps it and really lets it do it’s job.
 
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Superjay5 said:
One last thing. When I do removals I typically charge by the hour with an estimated time.

It tricky to price it out… but in your case I would say I could have it fully stripped and cleaned up in about 6hrs. Depending how easy hinges and other things he went under came off…
Click to expand...

I am actually thinking of doing the lazy thing with a few of the parts that are tough to remove, like the rock sliders… thinking of just cutting it off straight and sort of tuck it in, at least until the summer comes and I rip it all apart to start my own build.
 
NashvilleTJ said:
Is that spot where you tried to remove the wrap? I don't see that spot on the other picture. It does look pretty good - are you sure the paint underneath is in good shape?
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Yes sir, that is the first spot that I tried.. my wife freaked out thinking I was pealing off the paint. I was worried about the paint underneath as well, but I think its been wrapped for a LONG time, and it only has 40K miles on it. Was kept in the garage a lot from what I was told.
 
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JMT said:
A side question, but I'd like to know what you think about wrapping body armor, in my case, corner armor. I have painted parts of the tub and armor before and only once did I get very good results (almost as good as factory and I can't tell without looking at the reflection closely), but it is very laborious to prep, prime, and paint, especially aluminum. I was thinking I could wrap it for much cheaper and it would look perfect in the flame red gloss. If I hit the armor, I hit the armor, same thing would happen if painted. I'd have to repaint it or just leave it, so I thought wrapping it would be easier and look better. Thoughts? I know it lasts only 5-7 years (correct me if I'm wrong), but mine lives in the garage and I figured it wouldn't hurt to try.
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Wrap media won’t stick super good to bare aluminum… it will stick, just not good enough. It would fail with time, as in start peeling up. So some sort of paint first would be preferred. An adhesion promoter could work as well.

You are correct on the durability. The one thing a wrap lacks over paint is the ability to buff out small scratches..

I go back and forth if I want to wrap my jeep. Biggest thing that always stops me is I wheel a lot of tight trails, lots of trees and branches… the wrap wouldn’t get abused pretty fast and there is no way to fix it other then to replace it. With paint, I can sometimes buff them out…
 
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Superjay5 said:
Wrap media won’t stick super good to bare aluminum… it will stick, just not good enough. It would fail with time, as in start peeling up. So some sort of paint first would be preferred. An adhesion promoter could work as well.

You are correct on the durability. The one thing a wrap lacks over paint is the ability to buff out small scratches..

I go back and forth if I want to wrap my jeep. Biggest thing that always stops me is I wheel a lot of tight trails, lots of trees and branches… the wrap wouldn’t get abused pretty fast and there is no way to fix it other then to replace it. With paint, I can sometimes buff them out…
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Well, that solves that. I will plan to paint. Thank you for your expertise. Very helpful.
 
TitanFlyer said:
Could be Austin. I am down on Rea Road and Tom Short area… they call it Waxhaw, but its really just over the Charlotte city line.
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I’m gonna guess that it was you then! I’m in Pineville, but go down towards the Ballantyne/Ardrey Kell area pretty often.
 
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