I have had a lot of people ask me how vinyl looks when covered over damaged paint or paint with clear coat failure. I know this is a common issue with these cars, since I've had several come in to have me wrap their roofs to cover up their faded/cracking/oxidized paint.

Here is the best example I could find at the moment in my picture data base. The owner of this blue Honda Civic coupe had me vinyl wrap the roof of their car with my gloss black vinyl material. As you can see in the before pictures, you can see that basically the entire roof was having clear coat failure. It is somewhat hard to see in the after pictures versus how it looks like in person. However, in one of the pictures I put a red box around the area that you can see how the uneveness resulting from the clear coat failure does show through the vinyl a bit still. Even though this is not a perfect solution to peeling/failing paint, it is still better than what was there before and will prevent further paint damage from the sun, etc.

Before:






After:










I can try finding more pictures to post if you guys are interested.

-Don Nguyen

donathon@gmail.com

 

Random question. How would you prep clear coat failure? I'm assuming if you sanded it down the area in the red box would be smoother? How do you prevent bubbles from forming around that?

Going to do be doing it for my mom's trunk. It's way worst than this

 

If you guys want, I can start a vinyl wrapping faq thread where you guys can ask me details or questions regarding vinyl, etc.

Yes, the better the surface finish of the paint, the better the results will be after the vinyl wrap has been applied. Imagine it as if you were spray painting your roof. If you spray painted a surface that wasn't smooth, it'll show in the results. Similarly, that's the case with vinyl as well, since it is not thick enough to fill all of the cracks/dents/etc (you'd need bondo for that).

Bubbles forming around uneven areas of the roof is not an issue. It sticks just the same.

-Don

 

There is a service bluefin out for that body Civic where the customer can have the damaged paint repaired at no cost to them. Haha.

However, nice job on the wrapping. I would love to ha e you wrap the roof on my integra and civic