Quote:
Originally Posted by ST185RC
(Post 3078531)
it's called vinyl.
But anyways back on topic, I never understood why people clear bra the car probably because i don't highway drive my car too often, hence my bumper looks pretty pristine. the only thing i have to worry about here is dirt collecting from being rained on.
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Well, that's part of the answer right there. I do a LOT of highway driving in an area with bad roads (Chicago) that tend to throw a lot of debris. In addition, this is my winter driver, which means rock salt on the roads in the winter. If you do a lot of road trips and such with the car, you will accumulate a LOT of rock chips.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ST185RC
(Post 3078531)
But when you remove it, the fresh paint underneath looks more vibrant than the rest of the car which looks like a bad paint job that wasn't blended. it's like tan lines and personal preference of course, but i really don't like them.
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While I don't yet have any first-hand experience with this, when I was looking to get this done to my car, I did a lot of research. Clear-bra technology has come a long way. It used to be that the bra would block UV light, which protected the paint from fading underneath, but resulted in exactly what you describe. Modern-day bras, such as the XPEL wrap I have, are specifically designed to intentionally allow UV light to pass through, in order to supposedly ensure that the underlying paint fades at the same rate as the rest of the car. Now, I have no personal experience with this, as I've yet to remove the wrap, but that's the theory, and as it stands today, the paint looks identical on both sides of the line. In theory, the only difference would be swirls in your clear coat on the section that wasn't treated, but a simple paint correction should fix that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ST185RC
(Post 3078531)
If i have a car that's beat up everywhere else but with one nice looking section, to me it just feels weird. I rather have a car that looks consistent throughout, but if i need to fix paint, i'll put down the money to do it. Some will argue a better resell value. but to the eye of the beholder, it's not gonna make much difference.
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Not sure what you mean by this. WITHOUT the clear-bra, the car would be beat up in one place only: up front. The whole purpose of the bra is to protect the parts of the car that otherwise WOULD be beat up, resulting in a car that is now pretty consistent all over. Yes, in this photo I compare two sections of my hood that make it look like the rest of the car is pockmarked, but that isn't really the case. The car as a whole is uniform now. Without the bra, the front of the car would appear sandblasted. It would be FAR more unbalanced.
It's also worth noting that the alternative is to run no clear bra, and just repaint the front end of the car after a few years, which arguably won't cost any more. The difference is that the car with the bra will look great across all of those years, whereas the car without the bra will accumulate more and more chips, looking worse and worse for wear during that same timeframe :)