albireo

I am waffling BADLY on vinyl or painted stripes... I have a wife and 5 kids and it's hard to spend lots of $$ now. If I go with vinyl stripes I can afford to do CAI, exhaust, chip and tune... If I go with paint I'll need to do those a while later.
BUT I'm thinking that if I have the stripes painted on I'll want to clear the whole car too. It seems that if I do that I'm going to have the side benifit of protecting the original factory paint job now that it has the layers of clear over it, is that right? That way I can kill two birds with one stone - get painted stripes AND keep my original paint nice. (my car is one month old).
Does this make sense?

Joe

nole_trainer

Jo, I'm in your same boat (vinyl vs. paint and wife/kids). I've almost completed my interior mods and now it's time to start thinking about my stripes. I've gone back and forth about the vinyl/paint thing, and for me, the bottom line is painted stripes look perfect! I've seen some vinyl jobs that were less than perfect and I know that I just would not be happy with it (I can be very **** at times).

Another thing for me is that I'm not much of a performance mod guy, I really like changing the looks of my car. I've not got the performance mod bug (YET). Paint is a lot of money, I've got quotes as high as $2,500, but you know what they say about getting what you paid for!

05Stang_WI

I did painted and I'm very happy - However, If I had any questions I'd do vinyl. It gives you two great options: 1) taking them off easily later 2) you can always paint later. Defer the problem and get your stripes !

I've seen a lot of great Vinyl stripes on TMS.

Just my 2cents...

albireo

It is really expensive, and that's why I was thinking that if i got painted stripes and cleared car real good I would be investing in keeping my car's appearance looking great for a long time. That's why I'd like to know if clearing the car is a great way to keep the factory paint nice. If clearing the car doesn't really extend the life of my factory paint, then perhaps the big bucks for the paint stripes job wouldn't be worth it for me at this point!
Any thoughts?
Joe

2k5GTC

Your car already has clear coat. Unless you want to pay ALOT of money to have the entire car sanded, masked, re-cleared, color sanded, and polished, then you should go with the vinyl stripes. I asked my local body shop the cost to do the above to my vert to get rid of the factory orange peel ... whoa!! Never mind!

albireo

Oh, I see. I was thinking that if they painted the stripes on the car and then RECOATED over the clear, I'd have extra layers of clear on it and that would somehow be better??? No??
Joe

kevinb120

Not really BETTER per se. They would wet sand all the surfaces to be recleared just as part of the stripe painting process. I would go with vinyl stripes and add more stuff. More bang for the buck! Just find a good guy who does under the window trim and all the way up to all the grillework on the front bumper so you don't see any blue gaps.