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5 Ways to Prevent a Vinyl Car Wrap from Bubbling during and after Installation

12 April 2016

Viivi Kumpula

A car wrap is an ideal way to advertise your small business, whether you're a home repair expert or a certified dog walker. However, bubbles often form between the vinyl and your car's exterior and ruin the smooth look of a full wrap. Keep the vinyl smooth for years to come by making sure the professional installer follows all of these practices to prevent air bubbles.

Constant Smoothing

In order to stretch the vinyl evenly and get a strong adhesion between the material and the car's paint, the installer must use a heavy-duty squeegee to constantly apply pressure in the right direction. The vinyl needs smoothing at about a 45 degree angle to the surface, so curving panels and windows naturally change how the wrap needs to be smoothed for long-term attachment.

Without enough smoothing with the right tool, pockets of air remain trapped under the vinyl and weaken the overall bond holding the wrap on. The squeegee needs a tough but forgiving rubber edge to run over the vinyl without snagging the material and stretching it in a noticeable way.

Limited Stretching

Tugging and pulling too hard on a thin vinyl wrap product leads to wrinkling. Those wrinkles turn into dispersed air bubbles that ruin the seamless look of a vehicle wrap, and tension-related bubbles form primarily in corners and rounded edges where the material stretches more than is recommended by the manufacturing. Using thicker and stronger vinyl products for high tension areas and complex vehicles with lots of curves is the best way to deal with bubbles caused by stretching. It's best to prevent as many wrinkles and bubbles as possible during installation because extensive ripples can't be removed without replacing the entire panel of vinyl.

Material Upgrading

In fact, choosing higher-quality vinyls for your wrap prevents excessive air bubbles in multiple ways. Aside from taking more stretching and tension before it wrinkles, heavy-duty vehicle wrap vinyl offers other features, like

• self-healing formulas that cause the material to seal itself shut when a bubble is popped and pressed out.
• woven reinforcement meshes that reduce the vinyl's tendency to curl or warp.
• combination primer and vinyl laminate layers, which form a tighter bond with the surface of the vehicle to prevent bubbles from popping up a few months after installation.

While a higher-quality vinyl will increase the overall cost of the car wrap, you'll appreciate how long your wrap will last without issues like bubbles or fading due to sun exposure.

Careful Popping

No matter the quality of the vinyl or experience level of the installer, air bubbles can always pop up to mar an otherwise perfectly smooth wrap. In these cases, you or the original installer can carefully pop and press out the bubble with a specialty tool known as an air release tool.

Many installation tutorials claim you can use a razor blade or utility knife for this process, but those tools leave too large of an opening in the vinyl. The proper tool creates a tiny hole, which should be placed on the edge of a bubble instead of the middle.

Thorough Heating

Finally, make sure your car wrap installer uses a heat gun or heating booth to set the vinyl after it's wrapped around your car. The heat setting step causes the vinyl to relax, increasing adhesion and preventing both wrinkles and bubbles. A lack of heat setting allows the wrap material to stretch back towards a flat sheet or rolled shape. Aside from bubbles, you'll also deal with peeling and curling along the seams if the vinyl is insufficiently heated.

Contact a representative from a service like Kwik Signs in order to get your car wrap designed and applied, and keep the previous points in mind.

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