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ArcTec34

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About ArcTec34

  • Birthday July 1

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  • Location
    NJ, Bethlehem PA
  • Car
    06 LGT STG 2+ & IPT VB
  • Interests
    photoshop,design, LEDs
  • Occupation
    full time engineering student

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  • User Title
    Matte Black LGT baby!

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  1. thanks! out of all my projects (I get bored and build stuff.. my exhaust, tail lights, and a bunch of stuff around the house) this was the most frustrating. more fustrating than building an automatic watch movement haha. so.. high on that difficulty scale. A lot of it is patience, but the bumpers are REALLY tricky and you have to really know what you're doing for them, lots of stretching and heating and more stretching and heating (but you can't stretch matte vinyl very much!). By the end of the project, it was much easier. you also need one other person to help you for many of the pieces.. 2 people, even better.
  2. did them in separate pieces.. one piece for the actual handle, and then one for the surrounding piece, i was able to stretch the vinyl out a bit so it covered the indentation under the handle. this piece was the same piece of vinyl as the door, but I did cut around the seam with a razor, using a little heat, and pushed the vinyl in the gap between the pieces
  3. black LGT sedan going through the holland tunnel, I think you saw me.. a matte black car is had to miss
  4. yes, its almost necessary for the bigger body panels.
  5. If you look above a few posts, I think someone else links to a similar "carbon fiber" patterned vinyl that is made for more rugged/outdoor applications. the di-noc scratches very easily. I have di-noc on my interior woodgrain trim though, and that barely gets touches so its holding up fine there
  6. Fine with me! So winter is finally over, vinyl has held up pretty well. If I look close enough there are a few tiny tiny chips from rocks/highway driving on the front and some wear like that but not much else. I will probably swap out a few of the doors and re-vinyl them because of a defect in the vinyl from months ago, but that's about it.
  7. just found this thread, wow I have a lot of reading to do! Just got a new TMIC and a new tune for my stage 2 LGT, I get this noise in first gear especially so if I'm accelerating not dead-straight in direction
  8. thanks! nice vid.. wow my car deserves a detailing like that..
  9. please post here how it goes, then. exact model # of the vinyl?
  10. including mess ups, I used about 15 yards. I didn't put anything under it and I don't recommend it if you're using a decent vinyl- it will make it impossible to do the really curvy parts. also- as I said before, buy a smaller sample of the non-air release kind and try it out, because I think you'll hate your life for a a while/maybe not be able to finish the car with it if you have no experience with vinyl. most of that type of vinyl is not meant to wrap cars.
  11. heres a post with some PM's and answers, I've been getting a lot recently: i You should definitely buy a piece and work with it. I don't know of any good walkthroughs, and I'm sure either this thread or another by some BMW guy is as good as it gets, not to mention I'm here to ask questions to. Squeegee- use a felt-tipped one, it won't leave any scratched heat gun- for MATTE vinyl expecially, DO NOT use too much heat. a hair dryer is plenty! use it on high heat settings taking care of it- right now, not really.. its been covered with snow/salt for a month, it all just washes off. BUT do not use: automatic touch carwashes (the ones with the swinging brushes etc), wax, anything that'd scratch the vinyl. Normal hand wash with a sponge and dry with towels is perfect, or a touchless car wash. normal soap is fine. yes, matte vinyl shows finger prints/oil/smudges easier than regular paint, as you'd expect. washes off just the same, though. In the summer i was anal about finger prints and would always keep a towel and some isopropyl alcohol handy to remove them f you want to know what vinyl is like to work with, buy a sample of the vinyl first to try it out. I used some boring oracal vinyl which doesn't have the quality of the 3m and its really tough to work with. I got mine through a NJ distributor that my friend worked at, unfortunately they don't work there anymore though. see if you can just order the vinyl through a shop and be nice and maybe they'll help you out on that. I will find pics of my seams. but in short- I cut clean edges, and then overlapped them by half an inch. I only needed seams on the A and C pillars, and on the hood scoop inlet. I never cut on the car, and brought a flexible plastic "cutting board" that I could slide under and cut on
  12. one gets rid of bubbles under the vinyl when you put it down and disperses the air though little pockets or right through the vinyl itself, while the normal cheaper stuff doesn't do anything you air gets trapped under, making bubbles.
  13. i REALLY would stress buying a sample first and trying it out.. the non air release vinyl is a completely different animal and I can't even imagine how much harder it'd be
  14. oh excuse me, I typed that too quickly, DON'T wax before applying..haha
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