The difference between a regular delivery car and an entire fleet spruced up with colorful car wraps as unique as your company can be night and day. You can go from bland to eye-catching in a matter of a few hours. Professionally applied car wraps come in satin, gloss, and matte finishes and your choice of sizes and colors.
Even the texture is customizable since you can now bring your message closer to customers with holographic vinyl films that give a 3-D effect. That’s pretty cool.
A detailed mock-up of what you’re looking for can get the process started. And know that you can splash your logo, lettering, graphics, or lifelike photos across the side of your vehicles or even add accents around the trim, roof, and hood of your fleet’s vehicles.
Professional Vinyl Car Wraps: The Process
The multi-step process of applying vinyl car wraps can take eight hours or more. Generally speaking, cars and vans without much curved metal can receive their very own car wraps the quickest whereas cars with a lot of curves can take a little longer. Both can be done, though.
So, should you grab a vinyl wrap yourself and have at it? You probably want to think twice about that one because if you’ve ever tried to apply a number on a stockcar yourself you know all of the things that can go wrong.
Air bubbles caught under the wrap, poor measurements, and off-center results might be the least of your problems.
- Cast and Supercast Vinyl Car Wraps
Professionals have done this hundreds of times before and know all of the potential pitfalls.
Their jobs have also been made easier based on the fact that the adhesive on most vinyl wraps doesn’t get its stickiest until 24 hours after application. Best of all, the vinyl coating is designed to last at least five to ten years depending on things like road wear and stress.
The kind of vinyl that’s used on most car wraps these days – cast vinyl – is much easier to work with. Because it can take up to 24 hours to dry, you also won’t be left high and dry if you don’t love the results.
Another nice aspect of using modern materials to get your car wraps into position is that something known as supercast vinyl car wraps can stretch substantially, which makes finessing your car wraps around the curves on your fleet’s vehicles much easier.
Vinyl car wraps can be used as a form of advertising or another way to give your vehicles a unique paint job.
- Getting in the Paint and Making It Stick
When you have your car wraps professionally installed you’ll have the vehicle inspected for dings or scratches that could affect the application of the wrap. Once those are cleaned up, the application surface itself will be cleaned with alcohol and non-caustic paint cleaner.
Since a car wrap fits your vehicle very snugly, you might want to have side molding or other protruding parts of, say, a white fleet van removed prior to applying a wrap.
The installer will know what to do and what to watch out for, like seams near the roof that are hard to spot but necessary to plan for if you want a snug fit for your car wraps.
Since today’s vinyl adhesive can take a generous 24 hours to set, the installer has plenty of time to reposition it along the body panel or stretch a supercast vinyl wrap into place. From there, it’s essentially a matter of smoothing it out, cutting off the edges, and perfecting the seams. Contact us for more information on creating the best car signs and graphics.