Life of Brian

They are 1″ wide flat black accent stripes…

When I asked the folks at Charleston Wraps about my gloss black stripes as wax buffer plan, they cautioned against it. Paste wax and any vinyl is not recommended. They suggested I should get something called Wrap Care After Care JP from a company called Croftgate. So I scrapped the gloss black and ordered up some one inch wide flat black vinyl from vinylstriping.com.

I went to the Croftgate site for the recommended product and was put off by bullet point #2: Long lasting protection with a brilliant shine, so I contacted the company and asked about it. The fellow who replied said not to worry about that, as the words “brilliant shine” were aimed at the glossy wrap crowd. So I asked in return, what do you have that I could use as a wax/protectant on both the vinyl stripes and the cars paint. Frank thought that something called Wrap Care Matte & Gloss Cleaner would fit the bill.

I checked it out, and it sounded alright, but I wondered if the stuff called Wrap Care Matte & Gloss Sealant would work better for both paint and stripe. I went ahead and ordered a bottle of the Sealant product. I emailed Frank from Croftgate a thank you for your time thing and told him what I ordered. He replied, “We’ll get your order out right away and I drop a little something extra in the box for you.”

Frank came through in spades, I got a bottle of the sealant and he put a bottle of the cleaner in there too. Aannnd…a couple of their microfiber towels too. Over sixty bucks worth of stuff for my $30. Maybe this weekend I’ll get a chance to use the wrap care products and then take a nicer photo of the black accents.

The CBTNL needs a washing and my plan is to do it tomorrow evening. I’d like to throw a coat of wax on it too, but I’ve got a small problem, my fancy matte stripes. Everything I’ve read is don’t get wax on the matte finish, it”l make it shiny. That’s all well and good if the whole car is matte. Or your whole hood. Or even a couple of accents. But I’ve got 4 straight lines that run the length of the entire car I have to wax right up to, but not over! I was not to good about coloring in between to lines growing up, so this will be a daunting task.

No way I was going to mask the stripes off every time I want to wax the car. But the word tape keyed an idea, why not apply a 1″ gloss vinyl stripe along each side of the matte blue stripe? That would would be enough of a buffer and if I got wax on shiny vinyl, so what. Above is a mock up using my Windows 10 profile picture. The dark blue is nice and the white ain’t bad, but I’m partial to the black. I even did a little experiment, I laid a stretch of black electrical tape on all 4 sides on the trunk. Nice.

When I put the electrical tape away I noticed that I still had the sample of matte blue vinyl that was tested on the trunk lid awhile back. I had stuck it to the cabinet door in the garage. So I took some masking tape and covered half of the sample square. I then squirted some of the Ice Liquid Wax I’ve been using recently on the unprotected half. Let it sit for a second then wiped it off with one side of a micro fiber cloth and buffed it with the other. When I peeled off the masking tape, I couldn’t see a difference. I’ll have to try it on a not so noticeable spot on the car in daylight, but maybe this wax won’t be an issue.

I still like the black accents though, maybe that will be one of my Christmas gifts…