Dipping a car - anyone done it?

wibble

Snags said:

Is that a discrete way of saying you're hoping to get laid on the back of all this?

Get laid on the bonnet not the back, you won't fall off then as it's a hatch

boogieman

digitalscream said

I reckon I can do all of that in a day and a half:

Assemble tent - 2hrs
Clean car - 1hr
Mask car - 1hr
2 x primer coats and drying - 2hrs
5 x colour coats and drying - 5hrs
~~~
1 x topcoat and drying - 2hrs
Remove masking - 1hr
Break down marquee - 1hr
Figure out how marquee bits go back in the box - 2hrs

Apologies for shit edit. I will personally pay for the deed poll process to change your name to Jesus if you pull off the miracle of masking a complete car in an hour. 

  

Dominic

skunkwerx said:

p90fool said:

skunkwerx said:

Not to be a killjoy but it definitely needs notifying to the DVLA. Vinyl wrap is a definite, I would presume plasti/any form of dip is too or any method of changing the vehicles colour. 

I think only two of our five motorcycles are the colour stated on the V5, in fact this one is supposed to be army green....



Notifying the DVLA i s one of those things you're "supposed" to do obviously, but in a world where the police won't even come to your house while you're being burgled nobody really cares. 

Very true, same as illegal mods, tinted front windows, leds, illegal spaced number plates etc, they all seem to get away with it.. 

It’s just that if a cop does spot it… its an easy job for them to pull ya over. 

I know what you mean though.

I've had extremely undersized plates on my bikes over the last 20 years ......and about 500,000 miles... and only ever been pulled over once ( and that was at a filling station where they just happened to be doing ' reg checks ' on the way to the Bulldog Bash .

stickyfiddle

boogieman said:

Apologies for shit edit. I will personally pay for the deed poll process to change your name to Jesus if you pull off the miracle of masking a complete car in an hour. 

  

This was my main thought as well. In my experience, masking anything really properly always takes 3x the time I expect

digitalscream

OK, as an experiment, I've ordered rattle-cans to re-black the wheels on my car (the previous owner wasn't particularly careful when it came to parking), as well as the fuel-resistant coating. That should be enough for me to get the hang of it.

digitalscream

boogieman said:

Apologies for shit edit. I will personally pay for the deed poll process to change your name to Jesus if you pull off the miracle of masking a complete car in an hour. 

  

Masking for dipping isn't the same as masking for a proper spray job - a lot of it can just be peeled rather than masked. The windows and window trim need to be masked, and the plates need removing, but stuff like the lights can just be peeled (particularly with the panel gaps on the older BMWs). Not sure about the badges, will have to look at those a bit more closely.

I may also be able to enlist some help.

digitalscream

OK, so I pulled one wheel off the car, prepped it with their pre-dip stuff, and I've just done coat #6 - holy crap, this stuff is brilliant. Largely self-levelling, so no mucking around with loads of sanding required. I did sand down the worst bits, particularly the kerb rash (these wheels are fucked), but from a standing distance it looks great. Certainly a hell of an improvement.

I'll post some pics once the last coat's on. Got to leave it 12hrs after that before I can put the topcoat on (glossy + fuel-resistant).

guitarjack66

I've dipped a chocolate digestive into a nice cup of tea if that counts?

bertie

if you dipped a car do you risk flooding the engine ?

digitalscream

Anyway, here's the before pic (yes, it's mucky as hell, but you can see the shitty paint job and kerb damage):



The kerb damage is really deep, there was no way I was sanding it all out, but...here's the pre-topcoat stage:



As you can see, it's smoothed out a lot of the kerb damage (although not completely, but that was never the goal - these wheels are fucked and need replacing at some point).

It's come out quite well, I think. There are bits near the centre where I should've spotted the need for sanding a bit more, but overall I'm reasonably happy.