Notice where the bumper and fender meet up you will see the design seems to flow across it. This is because we trimmed it with a plastic sheet behind it. The fender was applied first and then the bumper, and the pattern on the bumper was hand trimmed on the car to overlay a bit on the fender, creating the appearance of no seam.

Damage to a customer’s vehicle is usually avoidable, but sometimes things happen. It’s how we deal with it that shows our character, integrity and longevity in the business. My wife, who is our vice president at 360 Wraps, was a police officer for eight years, and she has always made it clear that if you always tell her the truth, even when things went wrong, then she knows what she is working with. It’s when you lie and she finds out that things go south quickly. 

 

Your clients are no different. Keeping this in mind, you want to also hold your clients accountable and make sure they don’t wrongly blame you for things that were not your fault. 

 

The time that damage may occur on a client’s vehicle is most likely before and during the wrap process. However, the vehicle may come in with damage that the client doesn’t know about and might assume you did it unless otherwise informed. So here is a practice that we do that you might want to adopt. 

 

When a client’s vehicle arrives, try to do a walk around with the client before they leave. This sometimes works, but not always because they are in a hurry, or the person dropping it off is not the one responsible for the vehicle or whatever. Go ahead and do the walk anyways, and take a digital camera along, if there are any dents, scratches or any other visible damage, even a broken mirror that we found one time, take a picture of it. 

 

In this example, the side was installed first with the side wrapping around to the back bumper about 12 inches. We applied a piece of blue tape on the bumper where the wrapped around piece was going to be trimmed on the bumper so that when we cut it straight, we did not cut the paint. Then we applied another piece of blue tape over the top of the piece wrapped around about half an inch from the edge so that when we put the bumper piece on we would be able to trim on the vinyl with the tape under it and not cut through the wrap under it, causing it to split over time. This created a nice overlap and will last. Creating a design that will line up like this will also help with the appearance of a seamless wrap.

In our file naming system we have a folder for “Pics.” Inside “Pics” we have before pictures, completed pictures and damage pictures. Once you take those pictures on your digital camera, they will have a date and time stamped on them that will show when you took them. Just drop them in the damaged pictures folder. You can then do one of two things, make a phone call and tell the client just as an FYI that you found some scratches on the passenger door and just wanted to let them know before you put the wrap on it, or you can send them a quick e-mail with the pictures attached. 

 

The e-mail, if you don’t delete it, will also create documentation for you that will help you two or three years later or whenever the wrap comes off. We have not had any problem since we have been doing this when we point out to a client that there is an issue, it’s kind of like when you rent a car and do the walk with the Hertz guy. The last thing you want is to have another shop remove the wrap two years later and see big scratches under the paint and blame it on you. 

 

If you have your pictures from when you received the vehicle, you’ll be able to show them they were there all along. That is unless you actually were the one who scratched the vehicle, which I will talk about in the next. 

 

Your clients trust you with their asset, and even though we all want the best, sometimes bad things happen. What matters most is how you deal with it. 

 

We had a situation that was really nobody’s fault, but really sucked. We had finished a wrap on a Chevy SSR—wow, that vehicle will humble you. My team and I worked on this one together and they did a great job. 

 

In this wrap, we used the plastic sheets under the artwork of the kid on the rear bumper to cut the edge and use that as our seam, it created the illusion of a seamless wrap.

We finished the wrap for a local artist, showcasing his art down the sides. As I was going over every edge, inspecting it as I knew he would when he came to pick it up, I noticed that on the rear pass fender by the door, the vinyl appeared to be pealing back. I laid the edge of the vinyl back with my blade only to see that the clear coat on the paint had stuck to the vinyl and pulled off the vehicle. It made me sick; it was about a 2.5" area pulled back about .5", so it was not real bad, but if not addressed could get worst. 

 

I crawled under the car to look under the vehicle, trying to see if it had been wrecked and repaired before. I found a 2" piece of green masking tape on the bottom of the running board with a little red overspray on it only 12 inches from where the vinyl was coming up. I then looked in the door jam and sure enough the paint was not quite as smooth as the factory finish on the other driver-side door jam. So, now I had the unfortunate task of telling my client that A) the wrap was peeling part of the paint up, and B) if he didn’t know when he bought it I was breaking the news to him that his $75,000 truck had been wrecked and repaired prior to him purchasing it. It sucked, but I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do. 

 

He was unaware that the truck had been wrecked, but saw the evidence that we found and was surprisingly ok with it. We fixed the area and delivered the truck and all was good.

 

Probably one of the most common types of damage to a vehicle in the shop is caused by cutting on the paint, and unfortunately it usually is not so evident until the wrap is removed a few years later. This is a problem that you must catch early, kind of like cancer. If you don’t find out you have this problem until three years down the road when all the cars are being unwrapped, your company might just die from the problems of unhappy customers and word that you ruined people’s paint jobs. The question comes up all the time, how do you cut on the vehicle without cutting the paint? My answer to that is don’t cut on the vehicle unless it is absolutely necessary. I know that there are many people out there who could wield an Olfa Blade to a gold medal in the vinyl cutting Olympics, but I do not recommend for anyone to cut vinyl on a painted surface without taking some sort of precautions. 

 

This was a partial wrap that we pinstriped the design with blue tape prior to putting the carbon fiber printed vinyl on the hood. The blue tape gave us a straight line to cut by, and protected the hood from our blade while cutting. The red pin stripe was to help finish off the look.

Let’s take a look at some of the different types of trimming. Trimming a straight-edged graphic, like a partial wrap, can be done a few different ways. You can trim the graphics with a ruler, have them plot cut prior to installing them, or you can put a piece of tape on the vehicle where you would like to trim at. We use the 3M blue fine line masking tape which is kind of like electrical tape, not the paper kind. 

 

There are pros and cons to trimming prior to install or trimming after install. Pre-Trimming the graphics will keep you from cutting the paint for sure; however, it might make the install a little bit trickier. If you have an area that is contoured for the install, we recommend that you trim it on the vehicle using the tape method. To do so, you will apply the blue tape on the vehicle prior to installing the graphic in an area that you want to cut the graphic after it is installed. This works great on partial wraps that you are trying to transition from wrap to paint on, for example, the front fender. We do this a lot on truck and van partial wraps. 

 

You can lay your tape down in a nice straight line or arc where you will trim the wrap after it is installed. This will not work well if you have something in the design like a stripe that you need to cut and keep the width along the stripe the same. 

 

If you do have a stripe that borders your graphic that needs to be cut in a certain area prior to the install, you will find that pre-masking the vinyl will help you keep it from edge curling and ruining the vinyl while installing. You only need about 3" of tape on the edge to keep it from curling, no need to pre-mask the entire graphic. This little bit of tape will give you a rigid edge to work from while the rest of the graphic being nontaped will allow you to still work it over the contours and such.

 

The other method of trimming contour cutting freehand on the vehicle is something we do on full wraps to make the designs flow from one panel to another, if your design allows for it. In this case we will use the front fender and bumper area as an example. 

 

You would wrap the front bumper first and trim it between the front bumper and fender seam. Then when you install the front fender, as the graphic overlays the bumper, you can trim out a design element to lie over on the bumper. This will give the illusion that there is no seam, or transition from one piece of the vehicle to another, and when done correctly makes for a nice wrap. We use this method on helmet wraps as well to hide the seams. 

 

So, how do you freehand on the car without cutting though the bumper piece in this instance? Since you cannot use the blue tape—because you are not quite sure where to tape—and it’s not a straight line, you will use a thin sheet of plastic much like they package batteries in at the grocery store. We sell it at our shop to our students, and you should be able to get it at your local hobby store. It is used for model airplanes. You simply hold the plastic sheet up to the bumper and lay the vinyl on top of the plastic. This will give you a cutting matte to trim your graphics on without fear of cutting through the graphics underneath. Then peel the sheet back and lay the graphics down. 

 

Here is something you can do to practice. Take some scrap material and heat it and stretch it on a flat surface, like a tool box, window, table, or anything that you don’t mind gets scratched a little while you’re learning. Take a second piece of vinyl and apply it on top of the stretched piece. Now try to cut all the way through the first piece without cutting through the second piece. 

 

The reason I want you to stretch the first one is because if it has some tension on it when you even score the laminate with your blade by cutting a little bit too far through the top piece, in a few minutes it will start to split and you’ll begin to see a gap. Then try the blue tape and plastic sheet method and you’ll see for yourself why it is a good practice to implement these types of precautions in your wrap shop, too.

 

Just remember that these are just the ways that we do things, you might have a better way, and if it works for you stick to it. We only share this information because we are striving to make the wrap industry better and help educate as it grows. Good luck with your business.