Mostly-calypso: A $600 learning experience [Now S52 swapped]

[Cephas]

Kudos for diving right in! Thanks for sharing.

[ahrensNW]

Your threads makes me have mixed feelings about vinyl.
Your car is coming along quite nicely, nice pick up.

[NJBiddle]

Your threads makes me have mixed feelings about vinyl.

I would have definitely preferred a paint job, but $650 for the vinyl+supplies vs $3k-$5k for a good respray is a pretty easy decision at least for a few years. Whole lotta work though that's for sure.

[NJBiddle]

Finished up the wrap + reassembly this weekend. Will be getting some proper photos later this week after it's been cleaned up and all my trim bits are done. But here's a little photodump of the process of the whole deal.


Finishing the passenger side



Back corner was kinda tricky



Front bumper assembled



Showing how close the color match is. It's a shade more red/pink than calypsorot but pretty close



Taping up the seam for the roof. There are 8 seams total on the car for each pillar (top and bottom). You could probably do this with only 4 seams, but this was way easier







Cutting out the sunroof







Aaaaaaand all finished up and reassembled:





Overall I'm super happy with the results. My shabby bodywork still shows through, so there's definitely some incentive to have it professionally stripped and painted at some point in the future. Shoutout to those of you who do this professionally - extremely tedious and time-consuming. Took myself and my girlfriend ~3 weeks total working weekends and a few evenings when we had the time. Stay tuned for some better pictures :D

[jpod999]

Congrats on finishing that up, a vinyl wrap is definitely not something I would undertake on my own!

[sam_]

looks really nice. congrats!

[stonea]

Damn, that turned out nice. Congrats on having the balls and diving into it.

[Dj Buttchug]

Turned out way better than I expected. Nice job on the seams too.

[brainfood]

Looks good man, never would expect a wrap to appear that close to paint!

[NJBiddle]

Thanks everybody. Was a ton of work, but I'm really happy with the results. Next up I'll be finishing some trim bits and hopefully finding a front lip and some IS sideskirts. Oh and fixing my AC again... Tennessee is hot.

[Jaker]

Back corner was kinda tricky

What was the process for getting that corner done? Was it just lots of careful heatgun work or did you go baller with the propane torch?

I'm about to start doing the white roof on my wife's blue Toyota FJ Cruiser and I have 4 corners like this that I need to do, and they all have to have a nice clean edge to match up to the factory blue paint just below the top of the doors/sides.

[JeLani]

+1 they did something right with 3.0 m54s. nice builds.

And the 3.0 X5 is uber reliable![/QUOTE]

[JeLani]

+1 they did something right with 3.0 m54s. nice wrapping job :)

And the 3.0 X5 is uber reliable![/QUOTE]

[NJBiddle]

What was the process for getting that corner done? Was it just lots of careful heatgun work or did you go baller with the propane torch?

It's a little hard to describe - basically you heat the entire corner with your heatgun and just lightly pull/stretch it around the corner. The vinyl just molds to the curve with enough heat. Definitely don't use a torch though - would melt it in about .3 seconds. The heat gun we used was even a little too hot at times. Just have to be careful and learn the limits of how far the vinyl will stretch.

Here's a halfway decent explanation showing a complex curve: https://youtu.be/UADU7wLc_sE?t=61

[Jaker]

Thanks. That helps. I've watched a few YouTube videos where they use a small propane torch for heating. I guess they have the knack for it and it probably makes the heating process a lot faster!