Plastidipping the whole car (flame suit on)

I know I know....but guys, I am really starting to regret my black car purchase. I've literally been out since I got my car wiping it down or washing or just doing something. OCD is very real with black cars. Scratch and swirl are starting to show now and with only less than 1k miles I'm going insane and my family think so too. So, I was looking into having it Cquartz installed but that still doesn't change the fact that my car will still be black and cut down on tons of maintenance with maybe a little bit of forgiving but not enough to justify $600-800 I got quoted for.

Next, car wrap. I REALLY thought about this but $2500!? No. I can't do this right now.

Next, plastipdip. $650 any color. Now this sound better. Much nuch better! So I been looking through DYC forum and some of those dipped cars look damn awesome. So much changed since about 2 years ago.

Take a look at this one,



and this one,



So now my question is, anyone have any experience with dipping maintenance on the whole car? Is it worth it? What are some if the negatives?

$650 to maybe even give my 16 black paint a grabber blue shade would be just awesome!

Help me out here guys.

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I plastidipped the front bumper of my truck as well as the grill that looked pretty rough after 7 years of use. It has got a lot of chips in the paint. I must have sprayed at least four coats. For the first few weeks it looked great. You can spray it over a clean surface and it even fills in the chipped spots. I was extremely happy with how it looked. I even went overboard and did my rims since I had some leftover.

Fast forward about three months later and it looks horrible. The plastidip is not a smooth finish. If you rub your hand across it, it has some grip to it. It chips easier than paint and is harder to clean. I suppose I could spray on several more coats but I don't drive the truck everyday so I have been ignoring it.

The wheels didn't last a week before it started to peel off. I thought I cleaned it really well. There is still remnants on the wheels that a pressure washer cant even seem to get off.

I personally will never use plastidip again.

I don't have any experience with the wraps. I've seen people post some prices and there is no way I spend that much on something that isn't permanent. I would rather spend more on an entirely new paint job. Or even consider trading in for another color.

I didn't consider that a whole car spray might be different than the DIY method. Not sure that would change my opinion of it though. Just my 2 cents.

When they do the whole car they spray a hardener on it to prevent scratching and if you want a gloss they can put that on top. I'd still be worried about the front getting chewed up by rocks though.

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If you do decide to do it. DO NOT go with a matte color but get some pearls like what Fonzi does on youtube. It can come out really nice with the right prep work and time used. Honestly should take about a weekend for prep and painting. Buy the stuff off DipYourCar in large quantity and get yourself a spray gun. Good Luck OP and post pics if you go through with it.
PS Coincidentally I dipped my rear lower valance and front pony today lol

Today's your lucky day...I've been lurking this forum for the last year and a half. I just created an account specifically to weigh in here.

I just plastidipped my entire car Grabber Blue last weekend. I can answer any questions you have.

To sum it up, I'm happy that I took the dive. I know that there are a few people on the forum (one in particular) that think plastidip was invented by Hitler to raise taxes and kill our loved ones. However, if you follow the wisdom from DipYourCar's videos and embrace the fact that even if it doesn't turn out perfect that it's literally engineered to be a temporary layer on your car , you will be fine. Screw up a bit on a panel and you can peel it off to redo it if you want or go "meh, i'll probably be re-spraying it in a year or two anyway". The stuff is pretty easy to work with and forgiving. There are also some ways to salvage a mistake mid-project by using the dip liquefier correctly.

I will say that I don't recommend a high-gloss finish for your first few projects. Matte/Satin will hide minor mistakes and any minor texture (orange peel & roughness) that you might create better than gloss. With gloss, you don't really have the option of going back and spot-spraying at the end of a project to target localized drips/tears without doing the whole panel. Plus, I think I read that the gloss is the most sag-prone due to it being thinner than the pigmented coats. All that said, fate favors the bold - so go for it if gloss is important to you.

Anyway, I'm sure you'd love some pictures. Let's start there. I've only taken a few so far, let me know if there's something in particular you want a shot of.

Here's an imgur album of all the pics in high-def. I realized after posting that the forum doesn't scale them down, so I shrunk them in photoshop and re-uploaded them to another album for embedding below.

Allow me to get technical about the process.

First, how many gallons did I use?

2x White Gallons for base coat (recommended by DipYourCar for the "muscle" colors like Grabber Blue, most dip colors no longer require base coating) - 3 or 4 coats to get full coverage.

3x Grabber Blue gallons - 1.5x went on the car in pure form, two coats and I already had pretty much full color coverage. The third gallon got mixed with...

1x Pearl/Gloss coat - 50/50 mixed with the Grabber for the satin finish. This, of course, yields 2 gallons worth of product. 3 coats, plus several more on a couple small places I was fighting with mistakes.

Other Supplies:

I bought a bunch of stuff off dipyourcar.com; the canvas wheel covers, a spudger, some masking tape (plan to use an entire roll of yellow masking tape, slightly more than a roll of blue), the respirator (I only got moderately high on fumes), a can of the Fix Kit, a bottle of pre-dip spray, a bottle of DipCoat, and of course the sprayer. I also bought a big roll of brown parchment paper and a box of disposable scalpels off Amazon. The ProCar kits will also come with some towels, a mixer attachment for your drill, a DipGuard for your gas filler neck (gasoline = bad for dip).

Prep:

I cleaned my car when I got home from work on Friday then pulled it into my 2.5 car garage longways. In retrospect, if you can find a place that will rent a spray booth to you for a couple days for a decent price, DO THAT. You'll save some time on prep & clean up, and they will usually provide better lighting, ventilation, elbow room, and air purity than you can in a garage. Plus this stuff does stink up the house...not as bad as spray paint, but enough to keep you up at night. DO NOT TRY TO DIP YOUR CAR THE SAME DAY YOU HOSE IT DOWN. You think you got all the water off of it, but it's hiding in your side mirrors, door handles, and grille just waiting to ruin your project. Let the car air dry. Do NOT attempt this outside...at least not when quality matters a lot. First, bugs apparently find this stuff delicious. Second, wind/heat are enemies of the process. You want an environment where the dip does not dry mid-air, this will cause a gritty texture.

Masking vs. letting it get sprayed onto and peeled off later is a judgement call. I pulled my mirror covers off and suspended them on wooden rods but left everything else on the car. As you can see from the pictures, I masked EVERYTHING. Masking the grille and fogs is mandatory. Masking the windows & trim is highly recommended. Front splitter and rockers, you could go either way. Do NOT try to mask the badges. Do mask the vent portion of the heat extractors, even though it's difficult. I'm not sure how hard it is to remove the extractors, but if its easy enough to get that plastic part separate, might be worth looking into. I also recommend masking the whole brake+ decklid panel. Pop your hood and lay plastic or parchment over the entire plastic vent area at the base of the windshield. Since you have black to start with, decide whether or not you want the rear diffuser to stay black or get dipped. I left mine Magnetic and think it looks better (guess I should get a picture of this for you).

You MUST use the Pre-Dip spray, and you MUST use it after you are done masking. There is a guy above me dissing the product because it didn't stay on his wheels for more than a couple weeks. This is why: Dip needs a proper surface to bond to. Wax still on the car? Dip will fall off. Traces of tire shine hiding on your rim? Dip will fall off. Did you just get your greasy skin oils all over the car while you were masking everything? Dip will fall off. The Pre-Dip spray serves one purpose, and that's to remove all the contaminants above. That's also why you need to do it after you mask, not before.

Proper spray technique:

Watch DipYourCar's 45 minute video on the process, regardless of my advice. Some of the key points are as follows: You want your sprays to always be in motion, never rest the gun on a spot while shooting spray. This means a lot of trigger discipline, which becomes second nature by the second or third coat. I recommend cleaning the spray nozzle tip off every coat or two...it gets caked on dip that will end up shooting off tiny chunks onto the car. You want to be about 6-10 inches away from the car, putting dip on in about a 7 inch spread. You want to overlap about 50% as you go. The hood and roof are the worst. My arm hurt like hell the next day from holding the gun at a 90-degree angle. If you're getting anywhere near full coverage on a single coat, you're either moving too slow, or have the intensity dial turned up too high. ~30% coverage per coat is right. For matte coats, you can go panel by panel. For gloss (final) coats, Fonzie recommends walking the length of the car (seriously, watch the videos). You have to be careful with the flexible air hose when you're moving around the car with it. It will flop around and hit the car, tearing all the layers of wet dip off at the contact point - this happened to me on the first Grabber coat, but I ignored it and it vanished by the time the next several coats went on.

Soon as the last coat is done:

Anywhere you needed to mask that is NOT a floating edge (gap) against the paint, you'll want to peel the masking tape off as soon as the dip is dry to the touch, which is pretty quick. For me, this was primarily the seal around the windows and the fogs. If your car is like mine, the grille has a floating edge except around the corners. Just pay attention when you're masking. This, by the way, is also where those disposable scalpels come into play. SLOWLY peel the tape off. If you see the dip lifting off the paint, carefully saw at it with the scalpel to break it. Don't scalpel your paint/plastic, obviously.

Clean up:

Before you worry about the other sections of the car, clean your spray gun per the instructions. For the rest of the car, it may be easier to wait till the next day to peel.

Depending on what you masked, you may have some areas with over spray. When it's thick, it peels off just like a bad sunburn. When dealing with a fine mist of overspray, you have a couple options: Rub it with a microfiber and it will buff off. For more stubborn spots, finger works well (That's what she said). For areas where this seems tedious OR you don't want to risk abrasion, like those easy-to-scratch brakelight lenses, you can use Goo Gone or Bug & Tar remover to dissolve the dip - be careful here that you don't get the stuff on the surrounding dip.

Fixing imperfections:

"Fix Kit". There's another DipYourCar video on it. You can basically use this stuff to make the dip momentarily wet again. I used it on a sag to scratch the raised sag spots down to a smoother surface. You will need to put a layer or two of fresh spray over this if you do it, so don't wait until the end of the project to do this. Get on it immediately when you notice it.

Later, in the next few weeks, I'm going to be experimenting more with the Fix kit. I didn't get to my windows OR my front bumper peeling process in a timely manner and I have some not-quite perfect edges as a result. I believe that if I mask over the dip around the edges, exposing just a 1/8" edge of the dip, that I can quickly hit it with fix kit and maybe some left over dip to true up the lines. We'll see.

Sorry, long post and probably not that well formatted. Just wanted to brain dump as much as I could for you.

^ Nice write up. Your car looks great. It would be interesting to see pictures side by side two months from now, along with first hand accounts on how you maintain it. Regardless of anyone's personal opinion on the product, you provided a very informative How-To. Thanks for your contribution.

It wont last forever obviously like a wrap, but costs 1/10th of the cost of a wrap.

Once have the supplies- the big one being the paint gun system, all you really need is the gallons and basic tape/paper.

You could redo it every 1.5-2 years if it gets janky looking for, what, bout $200-300 of cost? Even respraying it yearly you'd have to keep the car 10 years to equal the cost of the vinyl wrap (which is much harder to take off too and cannot change colors yearly or every few years).

No flame needed, lots of higher end cars than Mustangs are dipped and look just fine.

[MENTION=20018]rwyatt85[/MENTION] i had my room painted carolina blue when i was a teenager, bit of a basketball freak...always loved the grabber, car looks badass man!

jvandy50 said:

@rwyatt85 i had my room painted carolina blue when i was a teenager, bit of a basketball freak...always loved the grabber, car looks badass man!

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Psst.........D....u....k....e...

Poppacapp said:

Psst.........D....u....k....e...

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lol i'm equal opportunity and actually enjoy watching them too, i still wana watch a game at cameron indoor. i have a feeling the OP digs chapel hill more:lol:

That turned out very well! I've used it on so many things it's ridiculous and really thinking about dipping my Raptor but haven't settled on a color yet.

Fuck, the last 3 platforms I've been in this shit always comes up.

I did it on my car. I did 6 coats and it looked good. Fast forward about 6 months when I decided to get the car professionally painted, it would not come off.

I had to use sanders, pressure washers and paint thinner to try to remove it

All the door jambs had it caked on there and all that.

After being in the car scene for 7-8 years it is hands down the worst mistake I have ever made with cars.

If you want to change the color get it painted or wrapped.

I still have nightmares removing that shit.