Hi,

As you may of worked out Im going to cover my ali sides in black vinal. I was speaking to the supplier and asked about a second layer of vinal to protect. He has sent me through some examples.

Included was a thick clear vinal that he recomended. He said it should stop scratches.

Its 5 times the cost of the black vinal. Bumps price from £10 all in to about £60!

Will this clear vinal do anything other than add a little extra weight!?

I will probably go for it becasue living with it all torn and then the PITA to replace it sounds long! What do you think though?

Thanks for any useful comments, as usual.

Biz

then what do you use to protect the clear vinyl from getting scratched?
if you use the clear stuff, then scratch that, you'll probably want to replace it. wouldn't it pull the black off too?

Anything that can scratch the black stuff will probably get thru the clear stuff.
Once you have driven the car for a while, it is possible that you won't care about the odd scratch. Black is quite easy to touch up with black paint. Clear not so easy.
I would think of the power to weight! Most money is spent to reduce it!

Good points.

My car is not the most tidiest any way but im ultra pickie.

I also think that if im going to all of this effort I dont want it to look cr@p after one weekend of spirited driving!

true, but again, if the black's going to do it, the clear will too. and it'll still look flakey, even if the black doesn't get ripped.
if you want to replace the clear and the black is ok underneath, i think the black will end up tearing off too, means a £60 replacement job, or a £10 replacement job, ie £120 instead of £20 total spent

What you really need is helicopter tape; search for it on Google!

Hi

From a Locost viewpoint I'd go for aerosol spray that can be 'touched up' locally as and when required for pennies rather than a finish that requires large areas replacing.
As they say - keep it simple

Regards Mick

Vinyl is not very good at resisting road chips ( black or clear) and it will end up in a worse state than paint IMO. Helicopter tape is pretty resilient but you think that normal clear vinyl is expensive? Why not just paint and repaint when it gets too bad to bear - at least you can touch up paint - you will need to strip all the vinyl off and probably need to soak everything in thinners to get the glue off

This comes with a 4 yr guarantee!

'Whilst it may not be Science Fiction Force field, nor is it Kevlar it is the only demonstrable means to protect your car for your period of ownership. In fact we are so confident in the efficiency of the Paint Protection films we install we (uniquely in the industry) offer a four year no failure warranty that provides a no failure guarantee simply stating that should something penetrate a Paintshield ™ Paint protection film product and make it to the paint we will replace the film free of charge (collision damage is excluded).'