I am considering adding stripes to my silver 914. Up the hood, and engine and trunk lid. It was recently painted (base coats/clear coat). Does anyone know a way I can put stripes on it without damaging the paint? So I could take them off later if I want.

After letting the paint cure for a good month+ the vinyl won't hurt the paint, but the problem is that the area under the vinyl won't have sun damage like the exposed areas. Even on silver there is fade/color change from sun exposure so if you peel the graphic off 5 years down the road you'll be able to see the pattern in the paint.

That is what I am afraid of. The car is parked inside. But, still. A friend of mine has some venial and car wrapping experience. He said to use:

3M
Control tack 7 year wrap material


He said he didn't think that this would cause the paint to be a different color when I take the vinyl off.

Second vote on letting the paint cure for a few months at least before appplying the vinyl.

The car was painted in March. So it's been 5 months now. Did you use vinyl on your stripes? What kind of vinyl?

Might be a good option for plastic dip. Easy on & pretty easy off. Also you can play around with the widths until you get something you really like . Supposed to not cause any problems with paint. Of course it will still keep your paint covered like the vinyl. So over a long period of time you'd have the same results. Although with the plastic dip you could change it every few months. Giving it a break between with some sun. I'd think you could keep it from being a problem

Steve,

If you use pin stripe vinyl or paint & keep the car covered with a quality all weather cover, then the paint fade should be a non-issue. A good old school pin striper from the old days will know how to hand paint the stripes, & tell you how to remove them later without damaging the underlying paint (or do it for you). Anyone can do the vinyl pinstripes if they're careful - even you. Surface prep is the key before either method.

The other issue is the "PORSCHE" script side stripes, which are also around in some NOS old vinyl, as well as new repop fresh vinyl ones. I'd lean to the latter so you don't have cracking vinyl as soon as they're in the heat & sun for awhile. Same applies to surface prep, keeping it covered, & pro or self applied.

IMHO the hand painted old school pinstripes look better & won't gob-up with wax & polish at the edges, which sucks & is really hard to clean on little pin stripes. It happens on the Porsche side stripes, but at least they're wider/bigger areas of vinyl. I'd be concerned that the 7-year wrap material will start to look crappy about 5-6 years, as they do on the wrapped buses around here.

I've got some pix of the hand painted pinstripes on my 73, if you need some guidance on where to lay them out to look best. My guy was an old pro who'd done things for Barris & the other Hot Rod & Movie custom car guys, so he knew just where to put them & talked me thru what he was going to do. Just send me an email after the 26th & I'll send them to you.

I'd wait at least 6-9 months for the paint to fully cure out, cuz the new urethanes take longer to off-gas & cure, than did the acrylics/etc. of yore.

Cheers!
Tom
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I had a vinyl wrap on my Subaru track car which covered about 60% of the car..I peeled it off before trade in and there was no color change at all. This being on a car parked outside with the wrap on for 5 yrs. I had to hand polish the edges where the wrap was due to wax buildup but underneath was beautiful new paint and the dealer had no clue it had a wrap.

You'll be fine- especially storing in the garage but I would certainly let the paint cure for the month as others have suggested.

Steve,

At one point, I thought I would like stripes like a Mustang GT500 that taper.

I scaled the measurements to the 914 and had Wayne ACDCFOREVER, here on the world make me up a set of reverse stripe templates.

Then I sprayed Plastidip from Home Depot. Talk about being nervous as my car paint was fairly fresh.


The problem I had with the Plastidip was that it did not mask cleanly. When I removed the template, the Plastidip came up with it.

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It came off without damaging the paint, but it wasn't on very long.

Steve I added stripes to my 70 9 years ago. This was the look I was going for. When it was time to get the car painted (5 years later) I removed the vinyl stripes the paint was fine under the vinyl. I did have to buff the edges to remove the line edge.

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I like that look so much that when I had it painted (later that year) I had the stripes painted on this time. Some people thought I was crazy and said if I ever try to sell it that I would have a hard time doing that. Well....... recently took exactly two weeks to sell a close to my asking price of $14.5 k.

YMMV but I say stripe away, it's your car.

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When Steve had the Strenger car repainted, he had the Stripes done in Vinyl

before

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after

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To put vinyl anything on, you have to like what you are putting on. That way, it never comes off. I did the negative Porsche stripe on my old gray ax car, and then got Joe Bob (yeah Joe Bob) to set me up with side logo, hood stripes and checkered sail panels. Not everyone liked my art, but they can pack sand. That's what I mean.

Here's the old race car....

and this....

not the blue tape..

I like it. Very cool.

You want sign vinyl. The wrap vinyl is siped, good for removing air bubbles bad for letting water seep under.