So, I hate the plastic looking wheel trim, as do probably most mini owners. So, what to do? Spend $500 for a body shop to paint them?

Has anyone tried to use that vinyl plastic wrap on eBay to just wrap these things in a cool color / design?

Please post pics if you have had this done!
Anyone else think this is a goo idea?!

 

I install vehicles for a living and so took the opportunity to wrap my mini in a matte silver finish which included all the cheap looking black plastic trim. After a year of being installed on the car I have yet to find a spot that is peeling. Some of the texture shows through a little but not much. I did use an adhesive promotor which can be purchased from any sign supply place on the internet.

 

A year later is the trim still holding up?
I'm planning on wrapping my plastic trim in the next few weeks. Adhesion primer and all. Just stumped on what colour to go with. Maybe gloss black, someone told me to try silver to compliment the Astro black. I'll post pictures when I do.

 

Hmm, what about satin or matte black?

 

Matte/satin black would defy the purpose. The trim is already matte black plastic.
Unless you meant matte grey/silver?
I want to wrap the trim for 2 reasons
1) it's ugly and unoriginal
2) it's a pain to wax the car without chalking up the trim, and its hard to keep the black trim up to par with the paint.

If I could I would wrap the trim astro black, but there's no astro black vinyl unfortunately. So gloss black is my best bet.

Agree? Disagree? Opinions? ...orange trim?

 

I did a little photoshop work.
And this is what the trim would look like with dark blues.
the first attachment is the original plastic black, faded and covered in wax residue.
the second is just a random dark blue that I could possibly get in vinyl, or something very close.
and the third is if it were pure black vinyl.

Any input?

 

I'd like to know how it held up too, I was thinking a while back about wrapping mine in CF, buy shy'd away after hearing that it would have to have most of the texture sanded off of it to adhere properly.

 

I think if you taped off the body, sprayed it with self etching and filler primer, and then painted it you'd have no problem. Or even filler primer and then wrap it.

I'm no paint or body shop expert, but I don's see how that could go wrong?

 

Guys, to wrap it all you have to do I sill off the arches and wrap the vinyl around them. That will keep them on.

If anyone wants to do Chrome arches (yes, I said chrome) I just happen t o have a huge roll I'd love to sell.
(yes I got it bc I was fixin to try chrome arches....lol)

 

what do you mean by "sill off" and does wrapping around require removing the trim?

Secondly explain your sig:
Why do you have solar panels?
Why do you have a farad capacitor, aren't those for when you're running amps and high wattage speakers?
Not meaning to sound blunt, just curious as to what you're doing with them.

 

Ah. Lol. Sill off. It was late, I was on my iPad. Bad typo! I think I meant to just say is Take Off the arches, then vinyl wrap them.

I have 2 solar panels in my rear sunroof. They trickle charge my battery. Why? Bc I'm an electrical engineer, and I can't help but put electronics in everything!

The cap is an experiment. Yes, they are mostly used for amps / sound systems, but I found out they make racing voltage stabilizers, that have a bunch of small, hi capacity caps in a sealed box. It's supposed to stabilize the current flow during hi reving / racing. So instead of spending $100+ on one of those, I got a big cap on amazon for 30$. Dyno charts show 1 hp increase with the racing stabilizers. 1 hp is 1 hp! Lol

Again, I'm a little obsessed with installing electronics, even if they have little purpose

 

Its not easy to take the trim off without breaking the clips. Its next to impossible actually.

I'm not going to argue with your electrical experiments (a cap weighs around 12-15lbs negates the 1hp)... But I can't imagine what you have your home electronics retrofitted with lol

 

Cool I've been toying around with the idea of having small solar panels on the sunroof to run a small fan inside the car to keep the temps down whenever parked under the sun. It gets pretty hot here!

BTT: Would also like to hear of any updates regarding the wrapped flares

 

im actually building a circuit to tilt the sunroof when it reaches a set temperature (say, 85-90 deg F). the sunroof will then stay tilted until either i manually close it, or if it rains, as i am also adding a rain sensor to the circuit that will untilt it when it starts pouring

i was thinking of using a timed fan as part of the circuit sequence. one of these maybe:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-Univeral-S...sories&vxp=mtr

... just add a small battery, like a 1 amp hour, stash it somewhere, add a charge controller to let the car charge it when i drive.

and btw leaf, my cap weighs maybe 3 lbs, 4 with the wires? so, +1hp for me, thank you very much

can someone link me to the best priced clips for the arches? i have one arch that has bogus clips, so it hangs. and, if i vinyl wrap, ill need them anyway....

 

Good stuff, where did you mount the cap?
And do you know if my sub and amp hooked up to an aftermarket stereo that draws more power from the battery also takes power from the engine too? Not the weight of the sub and amp, but the voltage it takes from the battery. It's just a cooper, no supercharger.

And did you say you wrapped your trim in chrome vinyl? Pics?

 

see pics...

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...4/s845/346.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b...A/s845/345.jpg

dont reckon having a sound system is going to cost you HP with regards to loss of voltage / current, it may be similar to running the AC or even less. You will def loss HP with all the extra weight, but im guessing you know that already

 

What's the box? Looks like a speaker, but like a home theatre speaker.
Any pics of the chrome vinyl?

 

the box is a cooler i built, custom fit for the mini's boot.

oh, the chrome vinyl, i Was going to do it, but decided against it :P
so, i just have a big roll of it now, sitting.

heres a link (should be anyway) to some other pics of mods, ect. in case your interested. i put some comments about some photos too...

https://plus.google.com/photos/11545...36961937639489

 

I've been thinking about the vinyl for a while now and I would sure love to hear how it turned out.

I was planning to buy the rear GP piece, but then it would be darker than the rest of the trim, so I'd have to buy new trim all the way around...and you see where this is going. Vinyl (flat, gloss, or if they had semi gloss) would be a great way to keep it even all the way around without having to replace everything.

 

I'm very serious about wrapping my trim. Maybe the entire car. All DIY ofcourse.
But first I'll wrap the trim to see how it holds up over the winter. I'll keep the updates flowing on NAM.
Its my daughters bday this weekend. And busy the following... When will I find time.

 

Let us know how it turns out, also yes, you will have to replace most of the clips, so be prepared.

 

I won't take off the trim. I'll do it on the car.

 

hey leaf, any updates on your vinyl wrap project? ive just been using some trim polish to keep my trim black... only lasts a week or 2 though :(

 

The weather here has been up and down with rain, we get one mediocre day and then 3 days of rain since the beginning of august. Plus I just blew my lower control arm bushings last week and have replacing those had a few more problems arise. so funds are low.

But, enough excuses right? I do have some useful info - there's a company that does vehicle wraps that we do work for (I'm in printing/marketing/exhibits), and I've been bothering them for info and they told me that they wouldn't do it because they've never done plastic trim before and don't believe it would last more than a year. I could use a primer, but when the vinyl comes off, the primer won't come off the trim, and I'll have glue residue everywhere.

And lastly I have too much wax residue (from waxing my car) on the edges of my trim. If you're using back to black or any trim shine product Nothing will stick to that messy combination. In the spring I wrapped my hatch with carbon fibre vinyl, looked amazing, then I waxed it, looked like crap. White chalky wax residue all over the place. I was told that nothing would help and I'd have to rip it off and start over. Nothing would get it off the trim either, just time.

I said to hell with your pessimism, went home, took out a jar of peanut butter and rubbed it all over the vinyl hatch and fender trim (saw this online one time). It worked... sort of, I would need a lot more peanut butter, but my wife came out and flipped her lid I was "wasting food on the car, it wasn't enough that I spend money on it, now I'm wasting food." While we argued the dog licked the peanut butter off my car.

It rained that night, and the day after and the wax swirls were still there. So I went back to the kitchen, but my wife hid the peanut butter. So I took a walk to the grocery store and realized why my wife was so mad - peanut butter costs $7. So I read the ingredients and took a walk 2 aisles over and grabbed a bottle of peanut oil, $4. Went home, locked the dog in the house, grabbed a paper towel and basted my trim and hatch in peanut oil. Grabbed a microfibre towel and wiped it all down to get rid of the excess, and it looked good. rained for 3 days, and it still looked good. A week later, still good, but some of the wax residue is sort of visible if you inspect the edges of the trim.

Long story short - fold up 2 paper towels, soak it with peanut oil (1-2 tbsp) rub it all over your trim. Remove it with a microfibre, add salt to taste and your trim is golden... or black. Try it, and then thank me later.
Cheaper and just as effective and long lasting as back to black. It's not super shiny, but it looks clean and has a sheen to it. And its environmentally friendly, for all you hippies that pump premium fossil fuels into your cat-less engines.

 

lmao. great story!
ive also heard that Kiwi leather polish works great, and lasts a long time.

im still wanting to do the vinyl wrap myself. I think, if you took OFF the arches, and wrapped around them, it would stay on. also, i put vinyl over my side arch lights, and on my headlight rings, and on my front windshield... its all been on there for some time, and looks just about like day 1. i think we should give it more credit for holding itself down.

as for that wax, i did the same thing: got white crap all over my arches. i think i actually tried rubbing alcohol and elbow grease, and it all came right off.

ill let you know about the kiwi thing. i may also just Paint the stupid arches myself, with some $1 walmart spraypaint, then cover it with expensive spray on polyurethane. thats worked fine for my rear bumper inserts so far, and those were just plastic rain gutter guards!

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-P...w/s960/196.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...4/s960/200.jpg