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.
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.