Well, as you can see from the following pics, I didn't "fail." Seriously, you would have to get pretty darn close-up to my hood to see the telltale signs of an amateur job. Amateur? Yes, I have to admit that despite the countless hours of practicing on various objects, wrapping other parts of the car (including the roof panels), I don't feel that I could claim that I am wrapping at a professional level. More on that later....
Here's what I did: I ordered-up some 3M 1080 vinyl wrap in Matte Black. I wanted to match the roof vinyl that I applied a while back. Having a 'free' Saturday night, I decided last night to do the wrap. The conditions weren't that great. The weather here in PA has been cold, and even with the warmer temperatures the previous day the temp in my garage was about 43 F at the car level. I do have a construction propane space heater, but literally ran out of propane in the tank minutes after firing it up. But I decided to do the project anyways. So I cranked up some music, got a beer, and started the prep work.
I had thoroughly hand-washed the car the day before. It is very clean... But I then worked the hood with a clay bar to get the surface super-smooth in prep. After claying, I rubbed-down the surface with a prep solution. Afterward, I opened the frunk and removed the hood badge. This was the first hour of my project.
With the surface ready, I then checked the temperature at the hood surface. I was still on the fence about whether I should ditch and wait for warmer weather... It too read out at 43, so I continued. My next dilemma was what to do about the Xpel front-end wrap that was already in place. My car came from the dealer with a partial front-end wrap, so the hood has a line across it about midway. This is barely noticeable on my GT Silver car, but of course putting the matte black vinyl on top of it would make the line stand-out much more. But at the same time I didn't feel like peeling it off as I was pretty-sure that I would probably pull the black vinyl off anyways, and didn't want to leave my front-end unprotected ( I drive this car almost daily). So the decision was to wrap right over the Xpel.
I placed the 5'x6' vinyl out over the hood, face-down. I am doing the wrap on my own, so I would have to work the vinyl a bit at a time and use tape to hold it in place at times.... With the vinyl face-down, I first cut the larger piece into a shape roughly outlining the overall shape of the hood, but with enough vinyl around all edges to work with.
I then flipped it over, and taped it in place. Then, I pulled the vinyl and backing down carefully towards the nose of the car overlapping, stopping about half-way down. With the paper backing exposed, I peeled it off and cut it away. Then carefully placed the sticky vinyl area back into previous place, touching in a few spots to set it in place. I could then start working the top areas of the hood up to the windshield edge to remove all air, wrinkles etc. This went extremely well and was very easy. Looked perfect and not a single hint this was installed by me... !
Once that section was done, I pulled the vinyl near the nose of the car up and overlapped the area I just finished. I pulled the paper backing off and carefully pulled the sticky vinyl down to the nose. This didn't go as well as the upper portion of the hood. As the hood slopes towards the nose, it is also curving a bit, and the vinyl was not cooperating. I had some "wrinkles" and other issues in the surface. BUT, I found that this is where patience paid off. I simply applied heat, and working in smaller sections at a time slowly worked all of the issues out of the vinyl until I found myself at the front edge.
I used my heat gun to continue working-out any bubbles or bumps in the hood, until it all appeared perfect... Now I turned my attention to the edges and trimming. I slowly went over the entire hood edge, working the vinyl over and under the edge. I then got my knife and began slowly trimming the excess vinyl off. By far the trickiest area to work on were the two corners of the hood at the windshield. There wasn't much clearance to work the vinyl from underneath, and the corners are very pointed in shape. In the end I got it done simply "ok." I will want to redo that area no doubt.
I also had some trouble in couple of areas where I trimmed a bit too much away, and the wrap didn't come far enough under to be consistent. I don't see the edges of the hood, but looking at the edges when the hood is open you can see the problem. I am too anal to let that go....
And basically that is it! I finished. Took me about 2 hours and 45 min, including the prep work. I put the badge back on, and went back over everything with my fingers, squeegee and heat gun to make sure I didn't overlook anything.
Here are my pics taken the day after...
I am not going to show you a picture of the underside of the hood... like I said, the trimmed edge didn't come out as perfect as I expected, so I will need to spend more time on that aspect of the project next go-around. Which I plan to do. In the next few weeks... LOL.
Needless to say, I am very happy how this turned-out. I had my brother-inlaws both inspect the work in the daylight today, and they literally didn't notice anything until I pointed it out. Like the line across the middle of the hood where the Xpel film ends. Or the small creases up under the edge near the windshield. They had no idea this was vinyl until I told them. So that made me happy!
Stay tuned, I am going to re-do the hood, and may just tackle other parts of the car soon!
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