Vinyl Wrap a WR?

I am tossing around in my head the idea of doing a matte green vinyl wrap on the WR. The only real problem I see would be wrapping underneath the fenders. I can just imagine rock chips nicking away the green vinyl and exposing the bright blue paint underneath. A friend of mine thought I should rhino-line the underneath of the fenders, but I'm skeptical.

Does anyone want to share their two cents about this topic? Has anyone out there done a vinyl wrap on their bike? Can anyone see a reason why this would be a bad idea? (Other than trail scuffs...)

Wouldn't it be easier to just paint the bike?

Any chips under the fender could just be touched up when needed.

Mine has held up better than expected.

I've thought about getting it painted, but there are many benefits to vinyl wrap. Apparently when you go to take the wrap off the paint underneath is preserved wonderfully. So if I were to ever sell the bike I would remove the matte vinyl and the bike's blue & white paint would look like new.

Plus wrapping a bike is quite a bit more affordable, so I'm told.

Finally, unlike paint the vinyl isn't permanent. If I one day wake up bored of the matte vinyl color I've chosen I can either remove it and restore the stock paint job or chose a different color or pattern to have the bike wrapped in.

Motokid, did you paint your bike yourself or get it done? If the latter, what did it set you back?

Of all the things one can do to personalize a bike, changing the stock color (that practically everyone else has) seems to be an obvious step.

I own the WR for its engineering, not it's appearance. I'm not a very flashy guy, so the bright, racing, dirt-bikey paint job and graphics aren't what I'd call ideal. So I'm thinking a quick cheap vinyl wrap will be step two in personalization. (Step one is an FMF Powercore 4 which arrives in the mail tomorrow.)

motokid, what kind of paint did you use on your plastics ?

How about Plasti-Dip?

Good idea, but that would require a bit too much disassembly for my tastes at this time. A vinyl wrap could be done with minimal disassembly.

It only takes 5 mins to remove all the plastics. Just saying....  

Touche, salesman!

Evol wrote:

motokid, what kind of paint did you use on your plastics ?

Krylon Fusion.   

PortlandWRider wrote:

Motokid, did you paint your bike yourself or get it done? If the latter, what did it set you back?

I did it. About 20 bucks.


https://wr250rforum.forumotion.com/t9056-ohhhh-the-possibilities?highlight=possibilities

My bike was originally: https://wr250rforum.forumotion.com/t757-painted-exhaust-guard?highlight=painted


Oh....even my seat is painted. Yep. That's right.   

Paint it with Krylon plastic spray - they've got some excellent matte army green colors in their camo line. You will pay a lot for the wrap and it will get scuffed and scratched - probably worse than you like over time.. even a half season.
The money you save by painting yourself will pay for replacement plastics once time to sell.
It isn't hard to do a gorgeous job yourself that you can easily repair the scuffs on.
Cheers :)

I think vinyl would be hard to get on right, unless you know what you are doing. There are some complex curves and contours that can turn out bad unless you have a pro do it.

I used a combo of paint and vinyl to personalize mine:



https://wr250rforum.forumotion.com/t10427-new-graphics-on-my-x

The day I bought mine I bought the black plastics, no stickers.

Where does one buy the black plastics?

From the dealer. Just ask for the plastics from a 2010 or 2009 WRX, hold the stickers...

Wasn't too expensive and made the bike look totally awesome. People are always commenting on it, wondering what it is, etc.

I also had the rims powder coated black. I like that look better than the silver rims. The only pain in the butt there was I had to have a shop "true" the spokes and wheel when it was done, which I guess is normal any time you put a wheel together.

Very very very VERY good to know, buddy! Thank you! I can't believe I didn't think of that. Do you know, off the top of your head, about how much they cost all together?

Not sure, I just kind of bought it all at once with hand guards, new tires, all sorts of stuff I got at a 20% discount because I was buying the bike...

I wraped my husky. It wasn't hard at all. Bought the wrap of ebay for $140 shipped. Got a 4'x4' sheet of dark digital camo. Plenty to do all the plastics.

I had never done anything like this before. Pretty easy stuff to work with. Took about three hours.