I really wanted to have stoneguard on my car because, well, you know, I don't want paint chips. Problem: I'm cheap. I asked around and it looks like its at least $550 in this area at a good shop, $800 at one place. But I can buy the hood, fender, mirror, and bumper kits (two kits) from stickercity.com for $240, this is 3M stoneguard. Hmm, sounds good, I'm handy, I'll go for it.

So I did.

I put the film on the car today, with help from my wife, in our garage with a space heater to keep the temp above 60 F in there. Real ghetto I know but I'm trying to save 300 bucks here.

So we do the mirrors first - they're small but not that easy since the surface curves. It worked okay. You mix some rubbing alcohol with water, spray the paint and back of the film to get it wet, then use a rubber squeegie to smooth it out. If you try this, take my advice and do not start installing without a squeegie; your hands will _not_ work. Another problem is that you need to have the film dry to tell if there are any bubbles - air you definately don't want, solvent bubbles should go away later, but really you want to try to avoid this.

Next up was the smallish fender pieces - I did this the same way but I wasnt happy with the result, so I pulled up the first one to re-lay it. You can make a big mistake this way if you're not careful. I didnt wait long and resprayed liberally with the alcohol. This technique was a life saver- it let me really lay the film down right, and not be afraid to pull up a section to redo it. Worked well.

Next was the hood, and it wasn't too bad, but it was big. you start in the middle, and work out. Tough getting things moving but then its fine. Had some trouble centering the film so there is about 1/8 in of uncovered hood on my drivers side. But you cant tell if you aren't looking for it.

Finally, the fender. Definately the hardest. You start from the middle again but the piece was not big enough and I had to stretch the material a lot. Had to relay both sides twice, and ended up pretty good in the end, with a little bit not quite covered. Then there are two more small pieces that go underneath the foglight area, these are way too short and needed to be stretched even more than I did, but I ended up less than about an inch off of open space there and its so low I dont think even I will ever notice.

I did have two problem areas where the film is buckled right at the edges. Very annoying but I didnt pick it back up in time to relay it properly.

If anyone does this, I'd recommend you do the hood, mirrors, and fenders in one day, and then tackle the bumper the next, or start early and give yourself a good long break in between, because since you've not done this before you need to take your time and develop the technique, and it gets frustrating. By the time I was nearly done with the bumper, I just wanted to finish the damn job, and that's not how you want to think while you're doing this.

Anyway, it came out great afaik. You really cant tell its there from 4 ft away, at least on my copper red with garage lighting, i.e., not quite full sun then.

We'll see how it looks in the next week or two but I think I just saved myself a good 300 bucks, and I may actually not regret it.

 

congrats sounds good

 

No pic's ?

 

i'd be scared to do that. nice job. and get some far and close pics up

 

Congrats, I paid my tint guy $500 to have him install it (4 hours for him). 5 yr warranty against fades or bubbles. I also have a copper red and most people don't notice it until I tell them to look again. But congrats $300 for a days work is great.

 

Got to wait until the lighting is good. I'm pretty sure if I snap them in my garage that you wont see a thing, and it'll look better than it really does =)

I'll post em up, and try to highlight an error or two. Also, the solvent bubbles should disappear, so I want to see how that looks.

 

^ cool ^

 

Felipe...you wouldn't happen to be filipino woulda ya?

 

Huh?