Anyone seen a real Slate body panel?

[thespacecowboy]

I am curious about possibility of Plasti-Dip and the if that material can successfully adhere to the body panels as a potential coating compared to wraps.

Plastidip gets real hard to remove. It lasts much less time than vinyl, and it suffers a lot from the sun. Getting some off that was ~1.5 years old and applied by a previous owner was miserable. Took two large bottles of the removal solution from dip your car and a pressure washer. Still took me I think 2 days.

 

[sodamo]

I’m a bit curious as to wrap down the road, year, 2 years on a never wrapped vehicle. Some sort of special prep or just a good cleaning?

 

[Tommy2Teeth]

Anyone hear if their wrap will be recyclable or if slate will except returns to dispose of properly? if vinyl type and fades in a few years, that’s generating a lot of trash.

 

[kvermeer]

Anyone hear if their wrap will be recyclable or if slate will except returns to dispose of properly? if vinyl type and fades in a few years, that’s generating a lot of trash.

Vinyl/PVC thermoplastics are easily recyclable. Just melt them down and they can become new plastic. Plus, there's a significant market for post-consumer vinyl in the plastic lumber industry, it doesn't matter if the material has colors or contaminants when Trex is going to douse it in carbon black and add 55% wood pulp by weight. The acrylic adhesive is a significant contaminant, but should melt down just the same.

But the ~200 sqft of petroleum-based vinyl on a Slate weigh approximately 5 lbs. That same mass of gasoline will drive an average American pickup truck 16.8 miles. If you replace your wrap every 16,800 miles (which seems excessive), you're doing 1,000x less damage to the environment than an ICE truck driver.

Also note that a traditional car body was painted with 2 to 3 quarts of primer, 6-8 quarts of base color, and 2-3 quarts of clearcoat. That's about 20-30 lbs of paint. The final application weighs less than a vinyl wrap, but most of the VOCs in that paint evaporated into the atmosphere.

I'd argue that you can re-wrap a car quite a few times and put 5 lbs of vinyl into a sanitary landfill, much less a plastic recycling center, and still come out ahead of traditional finishes from a sustainability perspective.

I’m a bit curious as to wrap down the road, year, 2 years on a never wrapped vehicle. Some sort of special prep or just a good cleaning?

An INSANELY good cleaning. Pressure wash, hand scrub, buff/polish with a low speed random orbit buffer, wipe with a clay bar (can you polish and clay bar over plastic composite panels?), then wipe the whole truck spotless with isopropyl alcohol to remove any soap, clay bar, or other contaminants. Install the wrap in a closed workspace with good dust filtration. Any speck of dirt under the vinyl will show through, any waxy/oily coating can result in adhesion failure.

Slate drivers are probably not as picky about minor imperfections as the appearance enthusiasts currently wrapping their pre-painted cars, no "real" truck user is going to care if your film has a tiny pimple where you inadvertently wrapped over a gnat that flew under the film, but it's really tough to get a manufacturer-grade appearance. Matte finish vehicles are popular right now because they're exotic, I predict they'll be popular soon among the DIY wrap crowd because they're more forgiving than high gloss...