So, I just had Llumar Paint Protection Film installed on the front of my SUV today. I was told to give it about a week to cure before washing. The installer did tell me that automatic car washes are ok. If it comes down to it I may use one (although I prefer to hand wash).
For those of you that have the clear bra, what are your thoughts on it? Llumar is suppose to be good. I went back and forth between this and XPEL. They both were good and offered great warranties.
Has anyone had edges lifting? I’m excited to not seeing rock chips on my front bumper!
I assume this is like the 3M film. They pitched putting this on with every new car we bought with the painted front bumpers but I never did. What I didn’t like was the dust line that would form where it ended. You could always see it. Not having used the stuff, I really have never had a problem with rock chips in the front by not using it. If it ever did get that bad, I’d rather spend a few hundred to repaint the bumper after five or more years.
May I suggest Dr. ColorChip? I’ve done the touch-up bottle of paint routine with some success but heavily gravel rashed paint just makes a mess.
The DCC product is a little different, You squirt the paint on and wipe with a silicon squeegee. It fills the chips in. Buff and then apply a sealer-fixer. Not as good as a repaint but it looks good and is far cheaper.
I would hope it will last, but here is a story why I personally would never apply it:
I regularly commute next to a guy in nicely looking Porsche of around 7-9 years old, it has this “protection” applied in the front areas and around the rear arches… so, at this age it looks awful on his car as it cracked and it also yellowed to the point it is very visible on shiny silver body.
I bet it was a “dealer-installed option” and I bet at this point it baked into the paint so much by Virginia sun that it can not be remoed anymore
I’ve had clear bras on three of my vehicles. On my dark gray Accord it has held up very well. No scuffs from automatic car washes and it does stop stone chips. On a white Acura that has seen duty in Florida it discolored and yellowed. Then mold got under it and stained it black. Quite a disaster. After 10 years forget removing this in any reasonable way. On black Lexus it worked OK, but I bought the car with about 4K miles and the installer did not clean the car before applying it properly. So there were some blemishes under it. I got that one for free as a result and lived with it. It helped quite a bit to keep the stone chips form marring it. This is one of th efew aftermarket items I often recommend to people.
Yeah, I’ve used that before. I’ll probably use it again when the touchup paint bottle runs out, assuming I haven’t sold the car by then.
No. We live in Minnesota. Hand-washing during the winter is an exercise in misery. It gets a mix of brush and touchless washes when the salt gets too obnoxious. It gets a hand wash and wax once winter is over, and in the fall. Other than that… We’re too busy for that stuff.
These aren’t show cars, so mild swirling from brush washes doesn’t really upset us all that much. If it gets too obnoxious we’ll have our detail guy give it a polish, but we’ve not felt the need to do that as yet.
