i have a 99 dodge ram that has pretty rough paint, clear coat chipping on hood, some light dings and such. its a work truck but i want it to be decent if i wrap it.

what kind of surface do i need to wrap on (just clean or fresh paint/clear, roughed up?). if i need to fix the chipping clear and such how should i go about that? orbital sander and then spray on new clear or?

Okay, I'm going to just throw some things out there about wrapping in general and some observations about wraps. I don't do overall wraps myself but have been using it for accent areas on cars/trucks and also some interior areas.

Vinyl wrap works the best on clean factory OEM paint. Factory paint is solid and cured and doesn't move if you have to heat/move/stretch that vinyl. Factory paint has minor orange peel but that doesn't really affect how the vinyl lays down. A good vinyl job done by a pro CAN look like paint.

Okay, so now let's look at your 19 year old paint.....with all the defects you've mentioned. You cannot just lay vinyl down over any of that stuff as it will simply transfer up through it. You could try to fix a lot of those irregularities with a surfacing putty like USC Poly Flex, primer, etc., however even if that stuff cures and you start laying down vinyl and trying to manipulate it, guess what....the vinyl can tear it all back out. And.....if that stuff is not fully cured and is off gassing at all, guess what.....gas bubbles in the vinyl.

So, have I been able to do vinyl over a fully cured refinish/paint job? Well, yes, but it was done on a full blown epoxy, filler, 2k, base color, buried in clear surface that I didn't touch for 8 weeks before doing the vinyl over those areas.

And so, my point here is......If you make a great paint surface like that....Who needs vinyl?....
Just do a good paint job on your truck and be done with it......

And last point, have you priced out doing vinyl on your truck? If you get it done I'm seeing $3500 to $5000 around me. If you try to do it yourself you'll will probably need $500 to $1000 worth of quality vinyl and there will be a very steep learning curve to applying it..... It is just not as easy as it looks in the online videos.

yea i priced out 150.00 for the vinal for the cab, the bed will be done later as i need to do lots of welding before its ready for anything.

if i need to repaint this thing to allow vynal to work then idk... maybe i look at just painting it. it looks like i can get the truck painted for about 200 bucks plus another 80 in clear. so i guess thats not too bad but i was kinda hoping to do vynal as its far less work so ive got a solid two or so weeks worth of what ever free time i have to get just the cab painted.

i think what im going to do is this, ill start by filling/sanding and prepping the body so its all ready for what ever. then ill price out cost of factory paint to see what it will take to just cover spots and repaint the hood. ill also price out primer/different color/clear and see how much more/less it is than including the vinal into the mix.

the bed i need to pull from the truck and get media blasted as its just totaled... i have 4ft diameter dents in it

Okay, so you were thinking about doing the vinyl yourself......Have you ever messed around with it before?...... I don't even think I would tackle a truck cab.... surfaces are transitioning and curving wayyyy too fast for my giant hands.....
Not saying you can't learn to work with it though. Most of the guys I've seen do it work in "teams" to get it to lay down......

yea ill get a friend to help. thus far i have done everything myself on this truck and i want to keep it that way. trans rebuild, engine rebuild, all the performance mods, electrical reworks and so on. i swapped the cab with a cleaner one but being its a 99 its not possible to find a cab with out rust in the northern US.

ive had to teach myself a lot so far (from welding to electrical to diesel engine rebuilds/gearing/auto trans rebuilds/etc.) and want to learn to paint/wrap but i am on limited funds so trying to do what ever is cheaper first.

ive watched youtube videos on it and it seems easy enough. i figure if i can build engine/trans off a youtube video i ought be able to learn vynal o.O

Well, learning to paint, at least I think, is a lot easier than learning to vinyl wrap. Painting allows you to learn in layers. I mean, you work with fillers, sanding/leveling, then move on to primers, again sanding/leveling, lay down base, laying down clears, and finally cutting and buffing. You get better and better at laying down coatings and you rarely have to remove stuff you have done......

Vinyl is like, "Crap I tore it, rip it all off." "Crap, I can't smooth this out right, rip it all off." "Hey, this looks great, next day, bubbles keep coming back, rip it all off." "Laid down black carbon wrap, looks great, went to a nice hot car show.....yep, ripping all that off when I get home." That is an expensive learning curve.

You've had good success learning other stuff so I'd say go for it. Best advice, start small and complex. Do some old mirrors, get some salvage yards parts, anything with odd shapes and work up to doors/fenders. And most important of all, BUY decent quality vinyl. It needs to have air release channels in it and should respond well to the heat/stretch process.

iNCC74656i wrote:yea i priced out 150.00 for the vinal for the cab, the bed will be done later as i need to do lots of welding before its ready for anything.

if i need to repaint this thing to allow vynal to work then idk... maybe i look at just painting it. it looks like i can get the truck painted for about 200 bucks plus another 80 in clear.

Good luck with buying all the correct and acceptable quality materials that cheap not to mention the consumables.

I am sorry but its still always amazes me that so many people think Painting a car is easy or can be done on the cheap.

Doright wrote:

iNCC74656i wrote:yea i priced out 150.00 for the vinal for the cab, the bed will be done later as i need to do lots of welding before its ready for anything.

if i need to repaint this thing to allow vynal to work then idk... maybe i look at just painting it. it looks like i can get the truck painted for about 200 bucks plus another 80 in clear.

Good luck with buying all the correct and acceptable quality materials that cheap not to mention the consumables.

I am sorry but its still always amazes me that so many people think Painting a car is easy or can be done on the cheap.

i was wondering who id see caught that part.
its been a bit since ive done a full repaint, but seems i had a few hundred in consumables. WAG,gun cleaner,mixing cups, strainers,masking paper and tape alone is about $100- and thats just for painting.
now onto consumables for prepwork...........

what i currently have at work are mixing cups, brushes, sticks, tape, plastic drop bags, two touch up spray guns, one large bed liner spray gun, 85 gallon compressor, 6"/3"/10" da sanders, 40-4000 grit paper.

i do some fiberglass work at the audio shop i work at but never done any painting, we wrap things with swaude mostly

ive done some pricing and i cant find actual pr4 paint by the gallon for less than about 400 bucks. i did find summit racing paint but although it calls the paint the same color but does not list it by its paint code. im not sure if the summit at 105 a gallon is worth buying.

so if i sand/prime/paint/clear the new metal areas and just blend it into the current good paint, then sand down the clear coat where its chipping, spray new paint over and then clear. would that be good enough? lots of the body still has good paint on it and if i buff/polish those areas the vynal would stick right?