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Off Road Surface Scratch Protection

9K views 21 replies 11 participants last post by  Front10 
#1 ·
As of lately I've really been getting the urge to off road my truck... Unfortunately I live in Northern NJ where off-roading is frowned upon, so the few trails that do exist are usually quad trails, or sometimes over-grown truck trails. So there is no way to offroad around here without decimating the paint job on the truck, and I don't know about most of you guys, but i'm very fond of my clean Metallic blue paint job.

This has motivated me to start looking at things that could be used to Armor my paint against brush and the pin stripes that come with it. I started looking at things like 3m paint defender, and the other misc brands of clear vinyl that you put on and it's supposed to protect your paint for XX amount of time, but that's not what i'm after. Those products are too long term, and instead of your truck paint being scratched up you drive around with the vinyl all scratched up, which is good when you go to sell the truck but doesn't do much for keeping the truck presentable for daily driving unless you peel the crap off between off road trips. So those solutions were out.

I want something I could apply quickly & easily on a friday night or saturday morning, off road for a couple hours saturday and/or sunday then remove sunday night. I started looking into masking tape/painters tape, I know the weekend rally guys like to use painters tape to protect certain areas of their car from the gravel and stones that get kicked up during the events, and it seems to work well on those small areas. However, I looked very hard and I could only find 2" maybe 3" wide painters tape which to armor the bulk of a truck with would take forever and whose to say it would hold up to the branches of pricker bushes that are so common... Also it would be costly to coat the whole truck, so I moved away from that idea.

After some surfing around on the internet machine I finally came across this stuff used to protect hard surfaces, mainly floors, from damage during rennovations or moving & whatnot. It's a self adhering Vinyl film that you lay on the floor or hard surface of your choice and its supposed to protect from scratches and abrasion.

Home depot carried a brand called Roberts and it was listed on their website as: Roberts Self Adhering Film for Temporary Protection of Hard Surfaces. It claims it can be laid down for up to 30 days without leaving a residue on removal. It's $11 and it comes in a good size roll of 2ft x 50ft that would make it easy to coat a whole truck with a buddy in 15 - 20 minutes.

For $11 i picked up a roll and brought it home for a little testing, first thing i did was stick it to my broken painted bumper valence and left it over night then peeled it up in the morning to make sure it wouldn't harm the paint and it would bond too strongly, it peeled up without any issue or residue left behind.

Next thing i did was cut a small piece and past it on the side of my truck to see how it would do against wind cause the stuff would be useless if it blew off before you reached the trails:



I drove to and from work like that, about a 15 minute ride mixed driving, about 10 minutes on a highway doing around 60mph. At the end of the day it was not phased by the wind, and it peeled off easily:



The last thing I'm going to do over the weekend is put another piece on that broken bumper valence i have and try to scratch the hell out of it with different things to see how well the stuff actually protects against scratching, i'll post pics of that when i get around to it.
 
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#7 ·
Since it's self adhesive and it's not supposed to leave any residue if removed within 30 days, the only preperation is to make sure the truck is relatively clean so the stuff can stick. Removal is easy, just peel it up, and i found when i peeled it up it actually took some water spots with it lol.

It should hold up pretty well, it's fairly thick, and I did take the corner of a flat head screw driver to the first piece i applied to the bumper valence. I didn't take any pictures cause i was in a rush, but the screw driver was pretty sharp and dug into the plastic to the point where it looked like i perferated the plastic, but when i peeled it up the paint was unharmed and the back of the plastic was not punctured.

I have high hopes for this stuff, my only concern with it is heat, i'm concerned in the warmer weather with direct sunlight and engine heat, it could get soft and bond more permanantly causing a problem.
 
#11 ·
Just plastidip the entire truck. Spray the entire thing. Might be about $100 to do it right. Then go off roading and you should be good. When you want to sell the truck or get it back to show truck condition, just pull off the plastidip. It's not scratch proof but little sticks and limbs won't go through it.
 
#14 ·
I've seen a truck with Plastidipped rocker panels go through a trail with dense manzanita. By the end of the day, most of the Plastidip had been peeled off by the brush.

Maybe would be fine for the OP though. If the goal is to avoid damaging the paint, OP should probably avoid that type of brush regardless.

The alloy wheels, tail lights, and anything plastic are all vulnerable to trail pinstriping too.
 
#16 ·
OK, so i left a piece of plastic on my bumper valence for about 3 days... Today i went at it real hard with the sharp corner of a flat head screw driver. I would've liked it to have done better, but I think what i did was probably worse then what I might encounter doing some light offroading.





Now, I feel what i was doing probably would've went mostly through the paint and down to the plastic without the vinyl film on it, but as you can see it left me with pretty mild scratches that could probably be covered up pretty well with some Scratch X:

 
#17 ·
I'm in the same boat as OP. I have a 2012 Pro4X that's all shiny and new. I'm going to try the new clear Plasti Dip. I just bought 4 cans to to the rockers and mirrors as a trial.
 
#20 ·
It's been some time since you posted this comment but curious how the clear Plasti-Dip worked if you used it.

I posted this not too long ago about my rear panels:

http://www.clubfrontier.org/forums/f8/dirt-road-driving-destroying-paint-rear-panels-172977/

I drive on dirt roads a lot and although my truck gets quite dirty often, I still like to come home and wash it to get it looking good again. These rear panels are the only areas that my easier off road driving destroys. I've thought about just getting those portions of the panels repainted and then spraying those portions with something clear for protection.
 
#18 ·
I do a lot of off road driving . There is no way your not going the scratch, ding and dent it , its a truck! If your going to worry about scratching it up maybe you should have purchased station wagon... Out here in the hills we worry more about hitting a bear, deer or drunk driver...
Enjoy it , drive it , have fun in it.

I was forced in the ditch a few months ago by a reckless motorcycle rider that took a corner on my side of the road. I didn't want to kill the sorry SOB , so I drove into a ditch hit a tree and tore my passenger side mirror off. I was lucky , that's all the damage I had. The A= hole keep going.
 
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