I have a few concerns when it comes to film, one is the installation, I have read many nightmare stories how the installer left razor blade marks in the paint when doing the cutting plus to do the install right they need to take some parts of the car apart, I know on the Porsches they remove the front bumper and front headlights, the rear taillights, etc.


My other big worry is when you remove the film down the road I am very concerned the paint might come off with it.

While I really like that it protects your car and after having the R8 go from perfect paint to getting a ridiculous amount of paint chips on the nose and hood due to one truck having dirt just flying off of it on the highway at 6o mph basically damaging any car driving behind it or even close to it.

It's a tough call ...

When I had the front bumper replaced on the Mazdaspeed five years ago (or six? Can't remember), I had the hood re-done. It had been clear-bra'd since new... like literally two days after picking the car up from the dealer, we had the film installed. So the film was on the car for four or five years and 140,000 miles, and it came up without issue. On a Mazda... notorious for poor paint adhesion.

It's a non-issue. Razor marks might be an issue, though it's something you should discuss with your installer. If you or they install a pre-cut kit, a razor is not used. If the car is "wrapped" (not something I recommend) then maybe it is? You would want to discuss this with your installer. None of you guys keep your cars long enough for this to matter anyway :)

Sanity check, please.

I'm scheduled to have the clear bra installed tomorrow. In preparation I wanted to touch up some of the stone chips and paint/cover up that small scuff in front of the driver's wheel at the very bottom. Ugh, up very close, it's depressing so see how many stone chips there are.

The last-minute cold feet I am getting is: Should I repaint the front bumper before installing Xpel, or is the fact that it looks pretty good from a couple of feet away good enough to cover it up as is and worry about repainting way down the road?

My feeling is that cars are never perfect (unless you're swapping cars every few months like some folks here) so just put the film over it and go enjoy the car. Especially given your install is today, even yesterday wouldn't have given you enough time to fix anything.

John

Agreed, and if you're worried about resale, original paint is waaaay better than a respray, even with imperfections.

Thanks guys.

Install is tomorrow morning.

You have at least Dr. Colorchipped the defects, right? I'd do that first.

I missed this thread earlier...

I had the Model S done when it was brand new (went in <1 week after delivery). Overall, I was very happy, but it was getting close to needing a re-do when I sold the Model S -- but I got a good 5+ years and ~94k miles out of it.

The only issues I had were:
1) some of the edges under the hood were starting to peal off. This is where they had wrapped it around the metal to the underside. I never did anything with it, but was concerning that these might eventually spread close enough to the edge that you could see it externally.
2) rock chips in the clear bra material. I had several. I forget which product I had, but it was not one of the newer self-healing materials (those were just starting to become avail when I had this done in 2013...)

As for yellowing, I didn't really notice that -- and I did have a white car. There was a little bit of yellowing visible on the same portions that were starting to peal off under the hood.

I had the "full front" treatment done -- hood, front bumper, headlights, front quarter panels, and front of the mirrors. I'm glad I did the full panels since partial panels show lines on many colors...

I don't know what colorchipping is. I just touched them up myself.

I'm only doing partial panels on the front quarters.