Tomas

Well, yesterday I had a 3M paint protection film put on my Polar White xB, and am impressed with how well it hides from casual looking, AND with the amount of painstaking work goes in to doing the job right.

For those of you who haven't watched it being done, I thought I'd briefly write up my experience.

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I decided to get my xB done before there was any chipping or pitting of the front surfaces, so I dropped an e-mail to a "local" shop (AutoGardUSA in Bellevue, WA) in the middle of the night, in the middle of the weekend after looking at their on-line catalog.

Around 10 AM the next Monday morning I had complete answers in a return e-mail.

The first thing I noticed was that the prices were not as bad as I expected and I got a 20% discount right off the top just for mentioning ScionLife!

I immediately called and set up an appointment for the next day.

I got there about 0835 (the directions given me on the phone by Regina were excellent) and met Sam (who's a ScionLife member), who inspected the entire exterior of the car, found a tiny hairline scratch on the rear bumper and had me sign a form showing that pre-existing damage and the current milage.

Sam then had their computer-controlled cutter precision cut the required pieces from a roll of the very expensive 3M film.

That answered one of my questions: How do they keep a physical, on-site inventory of the thousands of different pieces to fit the vast array of vehicles they cover. The simple answer is they don't - they make them on-the-spot as required.

The kit I chose (the AutoGardUSA Grand Canyon kit) was going to cover the front portion of the hood, the entire front bumper and air dam area, the fronts of the fenders, the fronts of the mirrors, and the grill.

The installer carefully washed and prepped the surfaces and then started applying the film.

The paint surface and the 3M film were kept constantly awash with a water-based mix as the film was installed.

The precision and attention to detail as I watched him work was impressive.

First off, the cut 3M film pieces fit exactly, which made the good job he was doing possible. He was not rushing at all, and was looking carefully at each fraction of an inch of the film as he positioned and smoothed it on. Several times he would spot some tiny speck of dust or lint and would pull up the film, remove the offender and lay the film back down again.

Nearly five hours later he was finished.

The installation and office crew were all nice folks, and enjoyable to 'spend the day with.' :D

The shop area was large and clean, the separate manufacturing, packaging, and shipping area for their products was also clean and efficient.

I saw the computer driven cutter make quite a few protection film sets to be shipped to others.

Overall, I'm not only pleased with the job they did and the price they charged, but I actually enjoyed the day floating around the AutoGardUSA/StonGard operation. (I was also impressed that everyone appeared to have more than just a surface understanding of paint protection.)

The printed and verbal instructions they gave me were good, and not only told me how to care for my new film, but gave back-up reasons.

For those in the local area I obviously recommend AutoGardUSA for the installation, and would have no qualms about recommending StonGard.

The only thing I regret is not taking a camera.

Here are their web sites:

http://www.autogardusa.com/

and

http://www.stongard.com/

Tell 'em ScionLife sent you...

kkawana

hmmm.. and if ya dont mind me askin...what that run you ?? after discount??? ... may have to save up for that... ..tired of chips and dings and stuff...

Tomas

Kekai it cost $261.77 with the tax.

They just did a BOP xB last week, and since your's is the ONLY one I'd ever seen, I thought maybe it was yours...

The full house StonGard cut for the xB covers more fully, but what I got seems to cover about 99 and 44 one hundredths percent of the area. I feel I got my money's worth. :D

If y'all want to see exactly what it covers and how it looks, I'll be at the SE-2 fling in Seattle on the 4th...

kkawana

Tom...
Nope not me... not yet.. .then again part of me want to cover my whole car... tired of inconsiderate pukes scratching/dinging my car... not to mention few rock chips i noticed above my windsheild....dang it.....
will have to keep them in mind if/when i can afford that

twors

My bumper is covered with some type of clear mylar from the factory but not the hood or front lower air dam. Was this a running change due to customer complaints of easily chipped paint...? My xb was born march '05.

Tomas

Hmmmmmm...

Interesting to hear that, twors!

Neither my PS xB nor the TCM xB that parks near it at this apartment had anything like that.

===> I wonder if we might be able to find out from Scion, or at least from one of the dealers on here, if there was a 'running change' for that because they recognized the problem...

(My PW xB was whelped 07/04...)

VShalla

i wish i had that. my bumper is chipped up now. and just today some jerk in a dumptruck came around a curve really fast and threw a big rock and put a few small dents and a 3 inch scratch in my hood. I guess im gonna need a new hood now.

kkawana

99.9% chance i dont have that film on my car... it's an '05 born in oct '04... maybe they left some clear film on it from transport??? usually see cars on trailers with some kind of colored vinyl over parts of the hood/bumpers to protect them on route to dealers?? i dunno.. just a guess

twors

xB's fly of the dealer lots around here it seems but I did see another xB (white) on a dealer lot that had the same protector as mine....different dealer,different city. I didn't even notice it till I waxed the front of the car last week....painted seemed kinda rough to the touch after waxing which I found odd till I figured out that I just waxed plastic film instead of paint

dgHotLava

whats the cost for installation????
because that sounds cheap for 5 hours of labor to put it on....

Tomas

Yeah, Super D, the labor charge was embarassing... If the installer only took home a part of that charge for his work he was severely underpaid ($54.40).

Twors, next time I'm at my dealer I'm going to try to see if any of their newest ones have anything like that, and then ask them about it if they do...

caringman42

This is very strange, but because of the accident that I had the door repaired by the body the paint did not match the yellow paint of the car. After I took it back the toyota rep. and the Dupont rep. looked at the car said that the protection that was put on the door that was repaired was not the same as the dealer had installed.
The film that the body shop had put on made the door about one shade darker

caringman42

pick up the car from the body shop today. The Dupont rep. said the problem was that the body shop and put opne to many coats of sealer on and they would have to take one of them off the door and fender which was painted. We will see if this makes the paint match.
The Toyota Rep. and Dupont Rep. as well as the body shop seem to think this will work.

Tomas

Purely an informational post - I just got a PM from an SL member about AutoGardUSA. Just to record the info, here are his question and my response:

My response:

RudyT

Tomas,
How visible is the clear protection? Are you able to clearly see the edge of the 3M product or does it blend in well?

brazuca

Hi guys...I also put the clear film last week....I'm in the Midwest and used Ziebart....their film is from DuPont if I'm not wrong, I'm in Indiana by the way. I have a TCM and it's very clear, you can just see it if you're really close. We had it done in my wife's Matrix a Year ago and it's still perfect....it really's protect. Due to the price, I did hood, fenders and mirrors, I also did the back bumper, instead of the black one from Scion, I put a clear film. The bumper you can always repaint it or most of the time the damage is bigger and you have to fix it anyway. Try it.....you'll like it.

Tomas

If you look for it you can see the edge - if you are not looking for it you will probably never notice. All the pics of my car have the film on it - it is not visible in any of them.

Bottom line is the film is a LOT less visible than paint chips, and even when visible a lot better looking...

peckhammer

It seems that Autogard/Stongard went TU or something, so I called AccuTint in Seattle. The cost for the partial kit, installed, is $399 plus tax, and the cost for the full kit, installed, is $699 plus tax. Maybe I'll just shoot the front of the car with Rhino liner and call it good.

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Peckhammer