Why do I need paint protection film here in Edmond?
If you have a brand-new car or have had multi-stage paint correction done, you’ll want to get some protection before the dirt, road grime, bugs, and birds get to it. That’s fairly easy to do with today’s abundance of waxes, paint sealants, and ceramic coatings readily available on the market.
But what about scuffs, scratches, and stone chips?
If you drive your car daily around Edmond, you can’t escape gradual wear and tear. Long commutes on the highway and frequent road trips will have the front end absolutely hammered by flying rocks and debris from the road.
Even the best professionally-applied ceramic coatings can’t protect your paint from mechanical damage. That’s why we here at Meticulous Mobile Detail, LLC provide paint protection film installation for vehicle owners around Edmond.
What Is Paint Protection Film?
Paint protection film is a relatively thick transparent layer of urethane that’s applied on top of the vehicle’s body panels to protect the paint underneath. Urethane is a widely-used polymer throughout not only the automotive industry, but practically every other industry. Modern cars have urethane bumpers, as well as urethane insulation, seals, and even interior components.
The material is very strong, flexible, chemically stable, and resistant to UV degradation. When paint protection film is installed on your vehicle, it becomes a second skin to body panels, protecting the paint against mechanical damage like scratches, stone chips, UV rays, as well as chemical erosion (think etching from bug guts and bird droppings).
Paint protection film was invented to protect helicopter rotor blades from flying shrapnel, debris, and dust during Vietnam. It worked very well and is still used today. If it can protect something like helicopter blades during battle, imagine what it can do for your investment (especially once Oklahoma wind kicks up).
Race teams took notice in the 80s and realized that a transparent lightweight film like PPF could help protect race cars from the rocks, debris and rubber flying along the track, as well as contact during close-quarters driving.
Today, paint protection film is a 250-million-dollar market, protecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cars from daily grit.
Get in touch with Meticulous Mobile Detail, LLC
AND GET YOUR VEHICLE TREATED WITH THE CUTTING-EDGE PAINT PROTECTION FILM HERE IN EDMOND
Contact us today for more info.
How Does Paint Protection Film Work?
When a rock flies into the car, it will make contact with a jagged edge or point, focusing all of the impact energy into a very small area. Automotive paint is thin and not very flexible, so it will crack and eventually chip away. A couple of years of driving will put dozens of these on anything exposed to the airstream - front bumper, fenders, hood, rocker panels, etc.
Once this happens, the paint is never going to be perfect again. You can touch up the chipped areas and reapply the clear coat, and with enough polishing, the paint will look great from any reasonable distance. However, after a certain amount, it’s more economical to repaint the entire panel, and that’s already expensive.
When you have paint protection film installed, the urethane layer will flex when impacted, absorbing some of the force and spreading out the rest onto a much wider area, thereby saving the paint. With this being said, once that flying debris or liter from the car in front of you smacks your vehicle and causes what would be extensive damage to your paint, you can simply have us at Meticulous Mobile Detail, LLC peel away the existing layer of paint protection film and install a new film.
Finally, modern PPF products feature a thin clear coat layer about 0.5 mils thick (0.013mm), which seals and protects the urethane layer from contaminants. Our film, KAVACA from Ceramic Pro, comes with a ceramic coating implemented onto the PPF, enhancing gloss and improving ease of maintenance when washing.
Urethane is porous on its own and, if exposed to the environment, will trap microscopic particles from the road, which will discolor the film over time. That’s why older or cheaper PPF products turn yellow after some years. Having the ceramic coating on the film helps prevent this from happening.
The top coat is resistant to UV, oxidation, and a variety of airborne chemicals and pollutants.
Self-Healing
Scratches, scuffs, and scrapes will accumulate in the film, but they won’t stay for long. Paint protection films have a self-healing property. Urethane works similarly to a super-viscous liquid such as honey. Any pressure will cause it to buckle and deform, pushing the material away without forming tears and cuts.
Urethane is a thermoplastic polymer, which means it softens and becomes more malleable when heated. Applying heat to the film, it wants to reject the energy absorbed by the impact and return to a flat, uniform state. It hardens back to its regular strength when it cools, and you can cycle it indefinitely without changing the chemical structure.
It’s almost magical when you see how scratches and scuffs disappear in seconds after blasting the film with a heat gun. Depending on where you live, on a hot sunny day here in Edmond, the film will sort itself out, healing most impact zones and straightening out.
Still, you want to be realistic about paint protection film. It will act like an invincible material, but it has its limits, similar to how bulletproof Kevlar vests don’t stop multiple 50 caliber bullets. Obviously, if you take a knife through the film, you will tear it apart and cut into the paint, ruining the whole panel in an instant.
Larger impacts can also make a dent in the body panel. As long as they don’t tear through the film, the paint should be spared, but you’ll have to make a visit to the body shop to straighten it out.
Paint Protection Film vs. Clear Bra
These are the exact same thing. Clear Bra was the name given to one of the first paint protection films developed for consumer use. The name comes from the “Car Bra”, a black vinyl cover used in the 1960s to protect vehicles from stone chips and other mechanical damage. Paint protection films are also called Clear Wrap, Clear Mask, Stone Guard, and other names depending on where you live.
Cost Vs. Value
The protection offered by paint protection films is unparalleled to any other product in the automotive industry.
However, their cost can be prohibitive for cheaper cars and lower budgets. You wouldn’t wrap a 2003 Honda Accord in PPF, but that brand new $80,000 Tesla with ultra-soft paint is a different story. Paint protection film is not a DIY product - you have to have it professionally installed. That’s where our team here at Meticulous Auto Aesthetics comes into play.
The cost of wrapping your vehicle is dictated by several factors:
Quality of the paint protection film itself
Not all are made equal.
Installer fees
Who’s doing the wrapping? Not all installers are equal and neither is the quality of their work.
Complexity of the surfaces
Are there lots of edges, creases, or louvers? Obviously, straight or gently curved panels will be easier and faster to wrap.
Surface area
Are we talking about a Miata or a Cadillac? The surface area will dictate how much material and labor is needed to complete the job.
Is it worth getting it on your car? Yes and yes.
When you match a high-quality product with a professional and experienced installer, the film will be invisible from any normal viewing distance and can actually enhance the appearance of the vehicle, especially when you’re traveling in and around Emond. Paint protection film installation can last more than 5 years, giving you long-term protection.
Obviously, if you’re in the market for supercars or high-end luxury vehicles, whose paint jobs cost upward of $10,000 dollars, paint protection film installation makes all the sense in the world. It’s a no brainer. It will very much affect the value of the vehicle and the resale price you get down the road by protecting and enhancing the surface it is installed to.
So let us here at Meticulous Mobile Detail, LLC do what we do best, PROTECT and ENHANCE your vehicle through our paint protection film installation service.
Get in touch with Meticulous Mobile Detail, LLC
AND GET YOUR VEHICLE TREATED WITH THE CUTTING-EDGE PAINT PROTECTION FILM TODAY.
Contact us today for more info.