How Long Does an install normally take?

[tintnfool]

10 inches here.

[Guest Invisibra.net]

I proudly took 3.5 hrs today and did a white california bumper and full fenders to damn near perfection. Tomorrows the full hood and I plan on spending an hour on it at least. I think that's good money made in a reasonable time for bulk work.

Well said, & I agree!

Plus, I appreciate that you said "Near" pefection. There is no perfect job. I've never done one, & never seen one either. The closer you look, the more little imperfections you can find. But keeping them at a minimum is what it's all about.

[msheurs]

Speak for yourself norm. I'm making babies over here. Lol

[Guest Invisibra.net]

ya ya, sure!

[minty]

Wow!!!

Tim, whilst I agree with your first paragraph, I think you should revisit your timings for full vs 24" installs in your second paragraph.

Firstly a full hood will take longer to get off the backing sheet than a 24" (I reverse roll it onto the hood), then you have to align it, just walking around the front of the car to do this will add more than your few seconds extra. Finally merely the fact that you are laying more than 2 times the amount of film means that it will take at least twice as long to squeegee and that is with a relatively flat hood, start bringing in vents, curves and valleys and that time could go up exponantially.

Now lets talk about wings, I have done over 40 full front end installs on the new McLaren over the last year and while I can fit a wing end in around a minute it's at least 20 mins if not longer for a full wing. Yes you can install them quicker (but certainly not in the two and a half minutes you estimate) but then you end up forcing the film to stretch and disturbing the adhesive leaving stretch marks and grab points for all to see.

Paragraph 3.

I agree to a point, it all depends on the skill and experiance of the designer. I use VentureShield and have done for most of my PPF career and I can pretty much tell who did or more importantly who didn't design the kit I am installing, by the way it fits and the coverage given. I also design my own kits so have experiance here as well, regarding Norm's comment on the VW kit if he were to be doing a fair number of them it would make sense to adapt the kit to his fitting technique and criteria, that way he gets the speed he wants without the exposed edge gaps, and the extra time taken to bulk every install. Case in point, I do a hell of a lot of Aston Martins and have adapted the kits for myself meaning that they are very similar to the original file but not exactly the same but in my and (more importantly) my customers opinion are a lot better and honestly I would have nothing to gain by bulking them.

Regarding the bulk install vs kit install, I do both though mainly kits as I do a lot of dealership work and they want the kit on and you clear of their ramps toot sweet. I do agree that parking sensor cut outs etc look better computer cut but when that sensor is on a stretch point like the Ferrari 599 that can cause problems so I delete those and do them by hand.

Regarding edge wrapping, how is that ever an option?? In what world could you envisage a customer saying "No don't worry about wrapping those edges."

Mr customer has just paid severall hundred pounds/dollars for paint protection and picks up a stone chip on an edge that could/should have been wrapped, but wasn't for ease of install and you expect them to be happy with that?

I wrap all the edges I can and if it makes the job a pita then so be it, thats what I am being paid for. And speaking of payment, how much extra do you charge your customers for a full front end install if it only takes you another 15 minutes?

Paragraph 5 totally agree. In my opinion if you are in it for the money walk away now. Yes you can earn plenty but you have to want to do the best job you can every time. You have to be willing to replace, re fit panels you are not happy with regardless if it's the first job of the week after a relaxing weekend or its the last job of a stressfull day and you had it in your mind that you might nick off early.

Paragraph 6. The answer to the original question is and should be it takes as long as it takes, your goal should be to deliver the customer as near perfect install as you can regardless of time (within reason of course), speed will come with experiance as you should know from your tinting background. The way I see it is if you need to squeeze another job in on a given day to make your money up you are not charging nearly enough but if you want to charge top dollar then you need to produce top quality work, always work up to a level not down to a price, that just leads to a race to the bottom.

Tim I heartily agree with your final few sentances, so much so I will repeat them.

"My advice to every installer is to suck it up and do the best installation you can possibly do for everyone, regardless of how long it takes or how many times you have to redo it. With enough practice, all of the difficulty you are encountering today will be in your rearview mirror, your neighbors in the industry will applaud you for it, and you will have the best reputation in your city in a very short period of time. "

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Although I find myself aligning more with Norm than Tim as I too am a one man installer making me chief cook and bottle washer riding the smooth handled broom. I think at the end of the day we are all of us striving for the same outcome.

Steve.

[BlackLabelMotoring]

Why dont we all just pull it out and see who's is bigger!

I use 3m and Bulk just about everything right now till I get my plotter and kits I like using, Just about every car takes me 1.5-2.5 hrs depending on my mood and how many phones I have to answer and service managers I have to talk to! With a kit I would be pissed if it took me more then 2 hrs! usually 1.5 hrs max on just about every car, and I am a single mobile installer who has to do it all not just install film.

To the dealer Vs retail comment, There should be no difference in quality. you forget that while you are doing the work for the dealer there is still a customer that bought the car and there the one that is gonna pick it apart! For the most part the dealer doesnt give two shits! But the customer still picks it apart! Maybe not as they pick it up, maybe not the second day, but sooner or later they will find your flaws and proptly bring it back and then you will have two pissed off customers, the one who bought the car and the service manager of the dealership that is pissed cause he has to deal with a complaining customer!

[Guest Invisibra.net]

Why dont we all just pull it out and see who's is bigger!

I use 3m and Bulk just about everything right now till I get my plotter and kits I like using, Just about every car takes me 1.5-2.5 hrs depending on my mood and how many phones I have to answer and service managers I have to talk to! With a kit I would be pissed if it took me more then 2 hrs! usually 1.5 hrs max on just about every car, and I am a single mobile installer who has to do it all not just install film.

To the dealer Vs retail comment, There should be no difference in quality. you forget that while you are doing the work for the dealer there is still a customer that bought the car and there the one that is gonna pick it apart! For the most part the dealer doesnt give two shits! But the customer still picks it apart! Maybe not as they pick it up, maybe not the second day, but sooner or later they will find your flaws and proptly bring it back and then you will have two pissed off customers, the one who bought the car and the service manager of the dealership that is pissed cause he has to deal with a complaining customer!

I believe I have been misunderstood in this thread from the beginning, and going back and reading it, I see that what I had in my mind was different, or at least not stated clearly right up front. So I am clarifying. First of all, what does doing quality installation have to do with sizes of 'manhood'? Don't even get that as a taunt here...

Working lines, junk under the film, stretch marks, or scratches left in the film from installation? Custom install, Kit install. That quality should all remain the same, & be excellent. I personally think that the orange peel in the 3M product looks terrible on cars compared to well, just about anything else on the market. This is not a slam or disparagement to the above installer, but the feedback I get from a LOT of customers about the 3M PPF. So I consider that to already be a lower-level of quality right there. Which is the point. There are MANY levels of quality, and factors that make up that quality. Let's go from 1 to 10 as a quick comparison. 1 being a person ordering a do-it-yourself kit to put on his black Mercedes AMG whatever without any instructions. I can guarantee it will be pretty ugly when finished. Then all the way up to the "psycho" install, with every body panel removed, so that the film wraps absolutely everywhere, and is truly and totally invisible. I'd call this 10. I've not done, or probably will never do a 10 as I don't feel like doing a full car diss assembly.

I also thought I had expressed my surprise that that Passat was done in 1.5 hours. It was my first full kit install, and was on an easy car also. But, my custom installation would have LOOKED better when done.

The reason I said that Dealership quality will be lower than retail quality ON AVERAGE is this: Most dealers are installed from a kit. Most retail I do is a custom install. ALL my customers who have had kits installed previously say that the custom is far superior. I know that sometimes a kit and a custom installation can look pretty close, but I'll put my custom install next to 99% of the kits out there and the customer will like mine best. Dealerships will like mine best also, but won't typically pay for the extra time it takes. I'll just say right now that from what I've seen, XPEL kits are the best. Good fit, finish, etc. However, there ARE certain allowances that have to be made for installing a kit. Look at the front bumper patterns available for the 2012 Porsche 911 series (I think any of them). They will have a large piece to cover the upper portion of the bumper, but there will be 2 to 4 places where the top and bottom are brought together on a seam. I'd imagine this is because it would be too difficult to work with the film in stretching it into place otherwise, but that is my point. Allowance has to be made for this. When I stretch in a Porsche bumper from bulk, it is always one piece, fully covering without a seam (Relief cut, yes, but every kit install I've seen covers less paint than if it was custom trimmed)

There are some kits that have over-size patterns, to roll edges. That's great, but look at the patterns for the front bumper of a 2008 Lamborghini Gallardo... (I just custom installed one 2 weeks ago) All the patterns I see online are either 3 piece, or 5 piece. I do these in 1 piece, no seams, no edges showing, other than where bumper and fender meet, and that is a VERY tight trim that is hard to see the edge on. I'll post up pictures in another thread. SO I'm not saying that the 3 or 5 piece install is crap. But the 1 piece IS better. Looks better, feels better, doesn't get wax lines along edges that don't exist.

When I do a job for a retail customer, I will typically remove SOME items to allow for a better installation. Such as, headlights and side-marker lights on all the Porsche 911 series body style. By removing the headlights, I get the film to tuck down inside where the headlight sits, for a no-line installation, and the bumper coverage dives well under the headlight also. Same goes for the side-marker lights. I remove the hood-emblem, on the Porsche, on Vipers, on Corvettes, so that the film applies smoothly under these emblems. The adhesive is often destroyed (Fishing line method) and so re-application of new double sided adhesive is needed. I roll the film around EVERY edge possible. So all 4 sides of a hood. All 4 sides of a fender (Except where fender/bumper meet.) Tuck the film away on the ends, top, bottom of bumper. I will typically remove the grills from a BMW for a tuck-away of the film. ALL THESE THINGS TAKE EXTRA TIME, and at least all the dealerships I've done jobs for do not want to pay for that extra time. They want it cheap, fast, and good enough to keep the customer from complaining, but any extra effort is just give-away, which I don't have the time to do.

Finally, I just finished working on two BLACK 2012 Lamborghini Gallardo's. I re-did a hood on one and a fender on the other, because of a fish-eye that was in the film. How many times have you thrown a perfect installation because there was a very small flaw in the product you were working with. And EVERY film I've ever worked with has had these flaws every once in a while in EVERY roll. You will find them if you look close enough. So add that time factor, and lost materials to the total job time.

I have a picture by picture example of a kit install job done at my local Mercedes dealership. This type of job MIGHT not be the norm, but I see a LOT of bad installations, usually working with a BAD kit design. (Not Xpel. Your kits are great). I KNOW there are plenty of really good installers out there, and some kits have a much better design, but this is what makes the retail customers come running to me in my area. This dealership offered me $10 more for the entire job to do it my way than what they were paying for mess that was on this customers car. Yea.. Let me just jump on that deal. I spend 3 times as long to make a seamless and wrapped install, to get another $10 for the job.

http://www.dfwautoclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3749

[msheurs]

Why dont we all just pull it out and see who's is bigger!

I use 3m and Bulk just about everything right now till I get my plotter and kits I like using, Just about every car takes me 1.5-2.5 hrs depending on my mood and how many phones I have to answer and service managers I have to talk to! With a kit I would be pissed if it took me more then 2 hrs! usually 1.5 hrs max on just about every car, and I am a single mobile installer who has to do it all not just install film.

To the dealer Vs retail comment, There should be no difference in quality. you forget that while you are doing the work for the dealer there is still a customer that bought the car and there the one that is gonna pick it apart! For the most part the dealer doesnt give two shits! But the customer still picks it apart! Maybe not as they pick it up, maybe not the second day, but sooner or later they will find your flaws and proptly bring it back and then you will have two pissed off customers, the one who bought the car and the service manager of the dealership that is pissed cause he has to deal with a complaining customer!

This type of job MIGHT not be the norm

get it...