In the next moth or so I will be attempting to vinyl wrap my wife's 2012 XJL Portfolio 5.0 N/A in brushed gunmetal, black brushed steel, and carbon fiber chrome delete. So far this seems very straight forward I will need to remove bumpers, mirrors, headlights, tail lights, door handles, grill, fender emblem, C pillar panels, and window trim. I have already removed the rear bumper from the car to fix a license plate light in the past and the door panels to fix speakers so removing bumpers, mirrors, headlights, tail lights, door handles, and grill is no issue. I have yet to figure out how to remove the window trim around the doors on this car and the C pillar panels. Can someone please point me to something I can review to understand this process!

This will be my first vinyl wrap but I have done extensive body work to cars in the past to include welding on quarter, rocker, and door panels! I will completely document this project since there seems to be no information about wrapping one of these cars on the internet!

 

You will need an awful lot of vinyl!

 

Personally, I would deem this a project best left to the professionals... but that's me. Good luck!

Dwayne

 

It's a pretty hard job to do without much experience. I wrapped my 997 and it took me forever and didn't come out that well. The hood and roof were easy and came out perfectly but stretching it around curves and getting it under all the trim and around corners, anyway under the bumpers started coming off, and it started coming off in the door jambs and I ended up peeling it all off. Enormous waste of time. Good luck! I had done a lot of vynil decals and lots of tint so I thought I'd be able to do it well. Lol

 

did you post heat the vinyl? I could see the 997 being more difficult to wrap do to the complexity of the panels.

 

No it was summer in a hot garage. And I bought an eBay install kit with a heat gun, and a few different razor cutters and squijees. It looked ok, but I didn't remove any panels or bumpers or lights. That might help. I did the light update on my xj and didn't take too long to pull front bumper and lights off.

 

I have probably watched 100 hours of video now about wrapping cars on YouTube (CK Wraps the guy is amazing) and think I have a very solid plan of attack. I will be removing everything from the outside of the car bumpers, lights, door handles, fender emblem, side view mirrors, and trim if I can figure out how it clips on. I am going to purchase a wide variety of squeegees and tucking tools to ensure I can get all the edges tucked nicely around every panel. Before beginning the project I am going to wash, clay bar, then prep the surface with isopropyl alcohol to ensure adhesion. As for the vinyl I am going to use high quality materials through Vvivid Vinyls and will be purchasing brushed gunmetal, black brushed steel, and carbon fiber. I will be post heating all panels to 180*F to prevent stretch back. I am seeing that 3M makes a variety of edge sealing products that I might go with but haven't made a decision on this.

If you did your project again how do you think you could have done a better job?

 

Why not just repaint it if you want a different color? It isn't like this car will ever have any collector value.

 

Getting a paint shop to paint a car is much more difficult then one would think. Paint and body shops do not want full paint jobs but rather collision work since its fast and easy turnarounds with big insurance profits. Usually a paint shop will quote you a really high number to get you to say no but if you agree then it will be worth their time (If you have ever tried to get a classic car painted you will discover this). It would be a MASSIVE waste of money to invest $10k plus on painting this $30k car door jambs and all when I can pick up all the vinyl for under $500. It isn't necessary about a color change but more about making your car different then everyone else's on the road.