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Bad wrap job on M3SR+?

Needs improvement?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 100.0%
  • No

    Votes: 1 11.1%

  • Total voters
    9
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So I just got my M3SR+ wrapped here in Canada for just shy of 3000 canucky dollhairs. This is my first car wrap I've had and I don't feel good about it. I'll attach some pictures, but if anyone could chime in with their opinions/experience that would be much appreciated. I feel like if I were to try and take pictures of all of the issues I would be out there all night...


I understand that since the car was painted white, it would be harder to hide certain aspects of it, so if I am overreacting then okay. I have no idea what I can do either aside from whine and hope they fix it? And if they do agree to fix it, it already took 2 months of waiting to get the wrap material in stock, so I feel exceptionally hesitant to ask for that. I should also mention when I got the car back, it was filthy. There are fingerprints all over the windows and in the car with dirt and dust everywhere.
 
This seems typical for many of the wrap jobs I see. They’re usually good 5 to 10 footers but have blemishes when inspected closely. I figured that was par for the course but I’ve also seen some really good jobs.

The dirt under your wrap shows pretty sloppy workmanship, which tracks with your complaint of receiving a dirty car.
 
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Not good, condolences. Looks like it was dirty before the PPF was applied.
I concur :(
This seems typical for many of the wrap jobs I see. They’re usually good 5 to 10 footers but have blemishes when inspected closely. I figured that was par for the course but I’ve also seen some really good jobs.

The dirt under your wrap shows pretty sloppy workmanship, which tracks with your complaint of receiving a dirty car.
I've also seen one or two really good ones and then lots of shoddy ones, but those looked old. It's crazy because the company has so many positive reviews and they do a lot of comercial truck work around here. They also said that their most wrapped cars are model 3's.
Sorry to see this, it’s horrid looking to me. Why didn’t you keep the white and wrap it with Xpel stealth?
I love this colourflip, it's really gorgeous from a distance. I never even figured about Xpel stealth, if I were to change the colour i think it would be some shade of blue. I regret not just buying the blue from factory right now :(
 
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So I just got my M3SR+ wrapped here in Canada for just shy of 3000 canucky dollhairs. This is my first car wrap I've had and I don't feel good about it. I'll attach some pictures, but if anyone could chime in with their opinions/experience that would be much appreciated. I feel like if I were to try and take pictures of all of the issues I would be out there all night...

I understand that since the car was painted white, it would be harder to hide certain aspects of it, so if I am overreacting then okay. I have no idea what I can do either aside from whine and hope they fix it? And if they do agree to fix it, it already took 2 months of waiting to get the wrap material in stock, so I feel exceptionally hesitant to ask for that. I should also mention when I got the car back, it was filthy. There are fingerprints all over the windows and in the car with dirt and dust everywhere.


Okay, so I've wrapped my own car before, so i can tell you what most of this is, as well as why it happened, then i'll let you know my opinion:

I can't quite tell what i'm seeing in the picture, is there any white showing around here? The complex curvature at the bottom of that inlet is going to require what's called an inlay to have a long life. basically, you lay a piece of vinyl in that curvature by itself, thenuse knifeless tape to line up the larger piece of vinyl thats used to wrap the bumper and make it look clean. there WILL be a seam, but if done correctly, it'll be WAY better than that area actually pulling away from the paint in a week to a couple months...

this looks like a spec of dirt or something under the vinyl. this should've been cleaned off the vinyl before being laid down. this isn't a hard fix while laying the vinyl in most cases, but after it's laid, depending on how they post heated the vinyl, the whole panel may need to be rewrapped.

This picture tells me they didn't remove the bumper to wrap it. This is a common shortcut most vinyl companies use, but on white cars, there's just not enough space between the two panels to give you enough vinyl to completely hide white paint. White is the hardest color to wrap because if it's not completely covered, you'll see it. This is the shop being lazy in my opinion.

This is honestly the scariest picture of all to me. The reason being is they did not take off the side cameras to wrap the fender. This is so basic and should be extremely obvious. The other issue I see with this is that the vinyl has a pretty jagged edge around the camera. If they were using knifeless tape (like you're supposed to, to prevent cutting on the paint with a sharp knife) this would at the very least be a super clean line. I dont' know for certain without seeing it, but unless I miss my guess, if you were to pull that vinyl off, you're going to have knife marks in the paint from where they tried to cut around the camera, rather than just removing it and fully wrapping the fender. Again, this saves them a TON of time, but just isn't the correct way to do it.

This is all just dirt and debris in either the vinyl or the paint. Either way, the paint should've been clay bared before wrapped, and if there were any specs of dirt on the vinyl, they should've been removed before laying the vinyl down.

With all this being said, if this was $3000 Canadian dollars (about $2,500 US), this is honestly probably the quality of wrap you can expect unfortunately. Some of this stuff seems super simple, but the whole not disassembling the car before wrapping part is the biggest time saver for them, and thus lowers the cost to you. Obviously I'm not blaming you at all; you don't know what you don't know, it's just unfortunate that you had to experience this. I can say that if you consider yourself a "picky" person, i'd steer clear of vinyl wrap. They're really easy to make look great from 5 feet even, but upon closer inspection, NO wrap is perfect.
 
Okay, so I've wrapped my own car before, so i can tell you what most of this is, as well as why it happened, then i'll let you know my opinion:

I can't quite tell what i'm seeing in the picture, is there any white showing around here? The complex curvature at the bottom of that inlet is going to require what's called an inlay to have a long life. basically, you lay a piece of vinyl in that curvature by itself, thenuse knifeless tape to line up the larger piece of vinyl thats used to wrap the bumper and make it look clean. there WILL be a seam, but if done correctly, it'll be WAY better than that area actually pulling away from the paint in a week to a couple months...

this looks like a spec of dirt or something under the vinyl. this should've been cleaned off the vinyl before being laid down. this isn't a hard fix while laying the vinyl in most cases, but after it's laid, depending on how they post heated the vinyl, the whole panel may need to be rewrapped.

This picture tells me they didn't remove the bumper to wrap it. This is a common shortcut most vinyl companies use, but on white cars, there's just not enough space between the two panels to give you enough vinyl to completely hide white paint. White is the hardest color to wrap because if it's not completely covered, you'll see it. This is the shop being lazy in my opinion.

This is honestly the scariest picture of all to me. The reason being is they did not take off the side cameras to wrap the fender. This is so basic and should be extremely obvious. The other issue I see with this is that the vinyl has a pretty jagged edge around the camera. If they were using knifeless tape (like you're supposed to, to prevent cutting on the paint with a sharp knife) this would at the very least be a super clean line. I dont' know for certain without seeing it, but unless I miss my guess, if you were to pull that vinyl off, you're going to have knife marks in the paint from where they tried to cut around the camera, rather than just removing it and fully wrapping the fender. Again, this saves them a TON of time, but just isn't the correct way to do it.

This is all just dirt and debris in either the vinyl or the paint. Either way, the paint should've been clay bared before wrapped, and if there were any specs of dirt on the vinyl, they should've been removed before laying the vinyl down.

With all this being said, if this was $3000 Canadian dollars (about $2,500 US), this is honestly probably the quality of wrap you can expect unfortunately. Some of this stuff seems super simple, but the whole not disassembling the car before wrapping part is the biggest time saver for them, and thus lowers the cost to you. Obviously I'm not blaming you at all; you don't know what you don't know, it's just unfortunate that you had to experience this. I can say that if you consider yourself a "picky" person, i'd steer clear of vinyl wrap. They're really easy to make look great from 5 feet even, but upon closer inspection, NO wrap is perfect.

All of your feedback is excellent, thank you very much! The first picture there are 2 things, 1 is like a fold/scratch in the vinyl just above the sensor and there are a bunch of them all over the car, i'd say at least 10 of these marks like this. The second thing is in that inlet that you mentioned, it wasn't covered entirely and it's very visible from a distance that there is white paint that wasn't covered over.

For the second picture, if there is dirt and debris under the wrap, which i am fairly convinced of at this point, is it going to damage the paint underneath? When I delivered the car to them, I had washed it only hours before by hand and was told they were going to clean it as well to ensure the wrap adheres properly. So minus a few bugs on the bumper, what I gave them was a clean car.

The part about the cameras really illustrates the whole job then. One camera actually doesn't look bad from a distance and only when you come up close to it do you notice it, but the other camera was done so poorly that it's easily visible from a distance. The front right bumper picture is extremely noticeable and what bothers me is that the front left was done better enough that it's not nearly as bad.

There is one point I am unsure about when it comes to corners and edges where the wrap goes, especially around the side mirrors which I was unable to get a good focused picture on, but it's not wrapped cleanly around the edge and just kind of bunched up into a little ball at the corner. Is this lazy or expected? There are so many areas too in the panel gaps where you can see the wrap was not wrapped around the edge of the panel and rather just cut lazily and unevenly.
 
Okay, so I've wrapped my own car before, so i can tell you what most of this is, as well as why it happened, then i'll let you know my opinion:

I can't quite tell what i'm seeing in the picture, is there any white showing around here? The complex curvature at the bottom of that inlet is going to require what's called an inlay to have a long life. basically, you lay a piece of vinyl in that curvature by itself, thenuse knifeless tape to line up the larger piece of vinyl thats used to wrap the bumper and make it look clean. there WILL be a seam, but if done correctly, it'll be WAY better than that area actually pulling away from the paint in a week to a couple months...

this looks like a spec of dirt or something under the vinyl. this should've been cleaned off the vinyl before being laid down. this isn't a hard fix while laying the vinyl in most cases, but after it's laid, depending on how they post heated the vinyl, the whole panel may need to be rewrapped.

This picture tells me they didn't remove the bumper to wrap it. This is a common shortcut most vinyl companies use, but on white cars, there's just not enough space between the two panels to give you enough vinyl to completely hide white paint. White is the hardest color to wrap because if it's not completely covered, you'll see it. This is the shop being lazy in my opinion.

This is honestly the scariest picture of all to me. The reason being is they did not take off the side cameras to wrap the fender. This is so basic and should be extremely obvious. The other issue I see with this is that the vinyl has a pretty jagged edge around the camera. If they were using knifeless tape (like you're supposed to, to prevent cutting on the paint with a sharp knife) this would at the very least be a super clean line. I dont' know for certain without seeing it, but unless I miss my guess, if you were to pull that vinyl off, you're going to have knife marks in the paint from where they tried to cut around the camera, rather than just removing it and fully wrapping the fender. Again, this saves them a TON of time, but just isn't the correct way to do it.

This is all just dirt and debris in either the vinyl or the paint. Either way, the paint should've been clay bared before wrapped, and if there were any specs of dirt on the vinyl, they should've been removed before laying the vinyl down.

With all this being said, if this was $3000 Canadian dollars (about $2,500 US), this is honestly probably the quality of wrap you can expect unfortunately. Some of this stuff seems super simple, but the whole not disassembling the car before wrapping part is the biggest time saver for them, and thus lowers the cost to you. Obviously I'm not blaming you at all; you don't know what you don't know, it's just unfortunate that you had to experience this. I can say that if you consider yourself a "picky" person, i'd steer clear of vinyl wrap. They're really easy to make look great from 5 feet even, but upon closer inspection, NO wrap is perfect.

I just wanted to add that this is one of the best posts I have seen here when providing feedback on vinyl wrap. I dont have a wrap (figured I would get one after I owned my car a few years to make it feel new again), and am no where near even a novice on the subject, but your post was very easy to read and follow, even for a complete layperson like myself.

Super helpful post!
 
Kind of reminds me of the typical window tint job you get today with many companies that costs $800+ Looks descent from 10ft but get closer and oh boy. You feel ripped off. Debris wrinkles etc. Sadly people hear and read all the great warranties Xpel and 3M have but guess what, none of that covers a bad install. They won’t help you out. It is unfortunately up to you to get the people to redo the bad work. Nightmare.

It’s not easy to get it right but just shows the lack of care detail and attention some people just don’t have in this World.

Good PPF info by the first responder above. Thx
 
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This is why I will never wrap or PPF a car. Yes, there are some good jobs out there, but from personal experience the vast majority of the jobs I see are horrendous. Most people just don’t look that close at stuff, and are happy with average results.

It takes a lot of time to do these wraps right, and time is literally money to these Guys.

Sorry you are not entirely happy with your job, I do hope they make it right for you. I have seen much worse and with a few areas redone your car will look awesome (already does actually). Good luck!

Tim
 
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This is why I will never wrap or PPF a car. Yes, there are some good jobs out there, but from personal experience the vast majority of the jobs I see are horrendous. Most people just don’t look that close at stuff, and are happy with average results.

It takes a lot of time to do these wraps right, and time is literally money to these Guys.

Sorry you are not entirely happy with your job, I do hope they make it right for you. I have seen much worse and with a few areas redone your car will look awesome (already does actually). Good luck!

Tim

Its like bidding out home construction work. If you go with the highest bidder, you can not guarantee you will get the job exactly as you want it... but if you go with the LOWEST bidder, you CAN guarantee they will cut corners, because as you said "time is money" and the lowest bidder doesnt have the time to do it at the level of detail some expect and still make money.

High end shops in Southern Cali charge 4-5k for this work. Generally, a high end shop will care enough about their reputation to try to make it right. The issue with going to a "high end / busy" type place is, they will have multiple installers, and because humans are humans, some of them will have less experience than others.

Just because the shop does 150k+ cars doesnt mean that they are going to assign their "best person" to a "basic" wrap job.

In this OPs case, since the shop has a lot of good reviews and is likely popular, once this was brought to their attention, hopefully they reprimand whoever did that work, and give the "fix it" to one of their best people. This is what I would expect to happen, at a decent / reputable shop.

So many people shop this kind of stuff on price, then start complaining when it doesnt match what they thought they would get.

Like I said originally though, the issue is, you could pay top dollar and still get something like this, unless you go to a really popular shop where the owner still does most of the work themselves. Expertise in any field cost money, but some people dont want to pay for it, but think they should get that level of expertise for "cheap" because they dont value it.

Not saying OP did this or anything, I am just "ranting on a soapbox" here, lol. I have seen a number of threads here where people are like "WTF why would you pay more than XXX for a wrap?!?!?!?! with XXX being a number they think is fair, but normally quite a bit lower than some high end shop wants to charge.

Someone mentioned tint in this thread, for example. I have been going to the same tint place for almost 20 years, for several BMWs etc. They are never the cheapest (they are not the MOST expensive either but are in the upper end of cost).

I have never once had an issue with window tint on any of my vehicles bubbling, etc. I had them do my model 3 in 2018 (all around, including windshield and 1 piece back glass). No problems with water in the computer on the dash that some report, no bubbling, etc. The same person has owned the shop for 15 years, and a couple of his tint people have worked for him for even longer than that.

Realize I am totally rambling now (lol) and my soapbox rant is definitely not directed at OP, im just agreeing with you that a good job on this stuff costs money, so people should be willing to pay for expertise.. and even then they may not get what they thought, but at least with a popular shop there is a chance they will try to make it right.
 
Update: I contacted the company and they had the car for 2 days. Was refunded some money and they corrected MANY of the issues that were present. Interestingly, some of the little pimple bumps were part of the paint as they were little like gray bumps that were actually part of the paint. I have tesla coming tomorrow for another issue so I will ask them about that, but so far they did a much better job the second time around. Some edges aren't flush, and under the bumper in those corners it is still showing some white just on the edges, but was advised that I could use a black paint touch up pen to hide it. They also did not remove the camera covers but got better coverage in there this time as they are apparently hard to remove without breaking the plastic clips on them.

I was told that it could take up to 2 weeks for the wrap to fully shrink and settle in, so I am trying to be patient before doing anything else like ceramic coating which was also recommended. The weather is real *sugar* today so I will try to get some new pictures when it is brighter out.