I'm thinking about getting the front end clear bra'd and not sure if I should or not so has anyone had their evo clear bra'd by a company? if so did you have any problems down the road like the clear bra yellowing or any problems in general?

 

Ive bought mine with 3m bonnet and front panels done but they didn't do the bumper so I plastidiped the bumper in clear and it seems to give it some protection, ever time I rang up to ask for a quote to get the bumper done they dicked me around with different ways on how it should be done so I thought stuff it and clear dipped it with a can, being black it all looks ok and if the 3m parts yellowed you probably can't notice it on black anyway. One place warned me not to take it to a place that stretches it on as they use Stanley knives to trim it and they cut your paint work which you can't tell until years later when you pull it off also most places give max 5 years warranty so all this is why I just plastidiped the bumper. But I would def recommend some sort of protection for black or red as these colors are the softest especially if you interstate cruise or track your car

 

I bought my car used with a clear bra,I don't know how long it was on there.It had mold and cracking spots all over the hood part.I removed it off the hood,front bumper,it took forever and it was nightmare to remove,even with a heat gun,blow dryer,tint blade to scrape it off and goof off.just my 2 cents

 

thats another issue, trying to get it removed, most places charge more than the bra to remove an old one and it may damage the paint getting it off

 

thanks for the info. I definitely want to get some kind of protection on it but I'm still 50/50 on the clear bra. it's a tough decision when you have to dump a ton of money into it and want quality work when down the road there's a possibility of it not lasting.

 

How does the clear dip look? I've been looking into some protection for mine as well, and if the clear dip is okay i'll definitely go that route for savings, and ease of application/removal...

 

I've bounced this idea around in my head for a long time. For me it makes more sense to have this done when im ready to retire my evo from DD service. The way i look at it as a DD i have just mentally accepted that the car as a whole will take some wear over time. Now if it was a garage queen i feel something like a rock chip from just a maintenance drive would really hit me harder then the inevitable ding in a parking lot. Mostly because the purpose of owning the car has shifted. I also plan on restoring the paint/body when said retirement happens before anything else.

I haven't gotten any quotes, but i would be willing to bet the cost of a respray and the cost of having a clear bra put on our cars isn't gonna be too far apart. Now if we had some exotics with decent paint that would probably be different.

 

I've tried a couple of things, first I tried a gloss look with glossifier direct onto the paint, this just peeled straight back off, the glossifier needs a matt finish to cling to, yeh I was stuffing around as its all over youtube that you need to put plastidip clear on first then glossifier on top. So I bought a can of clear and masked off the holes and sprayed away, I got about 4 coats on just for the bumper before it ran out, my mate gave me a few tips, heat up the can, clean bumper with alcohol etc, so now it looks like a painted matt black bumper which is sort of acceptable as a weekender and casual track drive, looks a little riced, so far it seems to keep the road rash off though, I've got one yellow insect that as stuck to the surface so I'll have to operate on it and dig it out. Other then that it holds up ok, you can see youtubes of what it like to spray clear on black, it just goes matt

Not sure what it would look like on silver maybe a little better, also I dont really want to spray glossifer on the matt now as its a bit trickier to spray gloss as it doesnt go on as even as the clear so I'll just leave the matt clear on for a while and see how it wears, so far so good

By the way I couldnt stand coming back after ever drive and seeing more white dots appear on the bumper, I had to do something otherwise it was going to go to crap, the car is pretty clean and I want to keep it that was as long as i can

 

That makes sense, I am the same way. I don't drive mine much, but I don't want to lose paint every time I do drive it. I'll have to check out the videos and see how it looks. I've never used the glossifier with plastic dip but I think it may be worth a shot. I'm interested to see how it will look on silver... Thanks for the reply

 

The 3M will yellow in about 4 or 5 years, I have a white 05 and it's still on there since 05, it is yellow but no chips.

I tried the plasti dip on my other car and that does not do much for protection, I peeled it after 1 winter and had tons of chips and the dip came off looking line swiss cheese with all the holes in it.

 

How thick did you put the dip on? I had done the "evo mod" on my SRT-4 when I had that and it lasted over 4 years no problem.