The wrap stuff looks great when professionally applied. The problem is that application is not nearly as easy as it looks. Hey, I had successfully applied some tape stripe and I watched all the videos and it seemed so simple, how hard could it be? I bought a frunk decal and the wheel wrap. I thought I'd do the install myself and start on the frunk decal, which looked pretty simple. I waited until I had a nice warm day, plenty of time and all the materials shown in the video. Even watched the video two or three more times. On my first attempt, I managed to mis-align it, ruining the left half. I stopped until I got a new piece and aligned the decal well enough to go through with the install. Everything went great until I tried pushing it down into place, but nevertheless I was about to put it down. The alignment, however, was still off, "too high" on the Spyder, leading to wrinkles I couldn't avoid. There were also about a hundred bubbles, apparently because I didn't push hard enough even though (I thought) I was following instructions. Obviously I wasn't but I really didn't know what to do differently. "Push harder" is easy to say, harder to do because too hard would also be a problem. This is a SKILL and after making a second mess I realized I just did not have that skill. That was hard to admit because honestly it looks so easy in the videos. Anyway, I still liked the decal so I got an entirely new one and took it to a professional to apply it for me. The pro did a nice job and the decal looks great now. However, even with a pro doing it, there are still a couple of small bubbles and I'll need to take it back to see if they can work those out for me.
Meanwhile, I still had that wheel wrap sitting there, waiting to be installed. Seeing how much trouble I had with the frunk decal, I totally chickened out on the wheel wrap and decided just to have my wheels painted. FYI, if anybody wants to try to install the red reflective wheel wrap in perfect condition, PM me. $10 and I'll pay the postage (U.S. only) -- otherwise I'll just throw it away. Maybe you will be better at this than I, or maybe you can have a pro put it on for you. Painting the wheels cost a lot more than the wheel wrap, but didn't involve any headaches at all, and maybe was cheaper in the long run if I'd ruined several sets of wheel decals and ended up hiring a pro to install them. (the painted wheels look great, but the wheel wrap would have looked great, too).
I am sure I could learn to apply wrap with practice, but I can't afford enough ruined decals and damage to my sanity to learn to do this stuff properly. All total, I spent almost $250 on one $115 decal and even though it looks good, it's a pretty expensive decal and not even that big. However, do NOT take this as a complaint against Pete. The situation is entirely MY fault, not his. His products are well-made, shipped quickly and look good when properly applied -- and Pete was also extremely helpful in my hour of need and discounted my "repair" pieces substantially, which he didn't really have to do (but I appreciated). It's also my fault because Pete told me the red reflective might be hard to apply and I didn't listen. However, I have to say that unless you have the experience and skills to do this, buy Pete's wrap but leave the installation to the pros.
