The plan: Vinyl wrap a beautiful light blue 06 VW Beetle Convertible pink for my daughter.
Reason: She is graduating from college on May 16! Also, It gives me a reason to really get to know this car and the vinyl is easily removable in the future if she decides she would rather drive a light blue car. This is going to be a surprise gift so this is a secret from her.
My daughter has always loved Beetles and her aunt (my sister) drove a 1999 New Beetle. She used to have the pink Barbie Beetle toy. Unfortunately, my sister's Beetle seemed to have a lot of issues. When it came time for my daughter to get her first car, my wife wanted a larger car to keep her safe and she bought her a 2001 Buick Lesabre which has been a wonderful car for a high school girl and now a college attending woman. As she is now finishing college, she has started to discuss saving money to buy a Beetle or a Cooper Mini. I started to look around a few months ago for a good deal on a VW beetle and suddenly an automatic 2006 Beetle Convertible with 14500 miles showed up for sale at a local dealer. I took my sister to look at it and help me test drive it and bought it after the test drive. The car had just been traded in and I was the first person to look at it after it came back from detailing.
I have worked on mostly older cars with my sons including a 66 Mustang coupe and a 73 Dodge Charger and have done some painting but decided I really did not want to repaint an essentially new car. I looked into Plastidipping the car but decided that Vinyl wrapping would look better for a color change. I have never vinyl wrapped a car before and figured that there was going to be a steep learning curve. I read various how to articles on the internet and ordered my vinyl. I figure that it will be easier to do the project if the car is partially disassembled.
I initially washed and rinsed the car (a rare nice spring in Minnesota allowed me to actually do this in March!) then took a clay bar to the finish. After cleaning the recently detailed car, I called a pointless dent repair specialist for the few small dents that I had run across. He easily pulled out the dents and found a few more that I had missed using his powerful LED light. Total expense was about $175.
I contacted my daughter's boyfriend to get him in on the surprise and he assisted me in initial disassembly of the vehicle. I was able to figure out how to remove the front fenders and bumper from several excellent tutorials on this site.
Here are some photos of the initial car, debadging, dent repair, removal of the fenders and front bumper. I plan on updating this log of the project so that my daughter can read it after the project is done and she has been given her car.
Reason: She is graduating from college on May 16! Also, It gives me a reason to really get to know this car and the vinyl is easily removable in the future if she decides she would rather drive a light blue car. This is going to be a surprise gift so this is a secret from her.
My daughter has always loved Beetles and her aunt (my sister) drove a 1999 New Beetle. She used to have the pink Barbie Beetle toy. Unfortunately, my sister's Beetle seemed to have a lot of issues. When it came time for my daughter to get her first car, my wife wanted a larger car to keep her safe and she bought her a 2001 Buick Lesabre which has been a wonderful car for a high school girl and now a college attending woman. As she is now finishing college, she has started to discuss saving money to buy a Beetle or a Cooper Mini. I started to look around a few months ago for a good deal on a VW beetle and suddenly an automatic 2006 Beetle Convertible with 14500 miles showed up for sale at a local dealer. I took my sister to look at it and help me test drive it and bought it after the test drive. The car had just been traded in and I was the first person to look at it after it came back from detailing.
I have worked on mostly older cars with my sons including a 66 Mustang coupe and a 73 Dodge Charger and have done some painting but decided I really did not want to repaint an essentially new car. I looked into Plastidipping the car but decided that Vinyl wrapping would look better for a color change. I have never vinyl wrapped a car before and figured that there was going to be a steep learning curve. I read various how to articles on the internet and ordered my vinyl. I figure that it will be easier to do the project if the car is partially disassembled.
I initially washed and rinsed the car (a rare nice spring in Minnesota allowed me to actually do this in March!) then took a clay bar to the finish. After cleaning the recently detailed car, I called a pointless dent repair specialist for the few small dents that I had run across. He easily pulled out the dents and found a few more that I had missed using his powerful LED light. Total expense was about $175.
I contacted my daughter's boyfriend to get him in on the surprise and he assisted me in initial disassembly of the vehicle. I was able to figure out how to remove the front fenders and bumper from several excellent tutorials on this site.
Here are some photos of the initial car, debadging, dent repair, removal of the fenders and front bumper. I plan on updating this log of the project so that my daughter can read it after the project is done and she has been given her car.
