JasonD

This might almost be a silly question, but what would you all rather have...

Painted stripes or vinyl stripes?
(stripe obviously would be whatever style you choose)

Birdie2000

I have gray ghost stripes that the previous owner put on, and I like them. Obviously they're painted, and I would say that I prefer them that way. I've seen many cars with vinyl stripes on them and they seem to always flake after a while. Granted it costs more to do the paint, but with the quality standards that you seem to apply to your car, I think you'll be much happier with painted stripes. What color are you looking at? I must admit, gray ghost stripes look awesome, although I would want mine a little more visible than they currently are.

Ernster500

Well, if you are prone to changing your mind, I would have to say, get vinyl. The only problem you would have is depending on the amount of time you had the stripes on, you would run into a "paint fade" problem when you took the stripes off.

Painting would be the way to go, IMO. The quality and look would be far superior to vinyl and you would never have to worry about the vinyl fading or pulling back.

The disadvantage to paint would be cost. The two quotes I have gotten from local paint shops are $900 and $1000 (compared to $200 from 3rdgendecals for vinyl). That is at least four times the cost (plus) of vinyl to get stripes painted on your car correctly. "Correctly" according to the paint shops would include prep and clear coating the stripes to match the rest of the paint.

If I had the money, I would get them painted...but, since I don't...I'm going vinyl...

E

Capn Pete

Well, I put a vote down for painted, but due to the aforementioned cost of painted stripes, I opted for vinyl ones for my car! Truthfully, they look really good, and you'd never really think about it, but if I had the money, I would have gone with painted stripes.

USHotRod

Just out of curiosity (sp?) has anyone priced what it would cost to get them painted?

Ernster500

E

Capn Pete

I paid $300 for the vinyl stripes, but my dad plans to have stripes painted on his '71, and he was told a price of $400 to $500 roughly (I think ) but his car is painted with enamel, not base/clear, so that's probably why it's not quite as expensive.

Brent94Z

Vinyl... because you can change your mind

I'd put on vinyl stripes and keep them for about a year. At that time if you think you still like them and would like to make them more permanent, then get them painted on. I like changing things myself so it would be very hard for me to paint something on if vinyl were an option.

If I were doing flames, paint for sure, but just plain old stripes, vinyl

u8dusst

900 dollars? Thats insane. A buddy of mine got 30th anny stripes on his Camaro and he paid around 200. Good job to. He had it done a few years ago back in high school and it held up fine up until a couple months ago when he sold it.

chasmanz28

you can always put a couple of coats of clearcoat on your vinyl stripes then it will last, have the best of both worlds

jasonj478

I got a buddy that does body and paint work and he said that if you put the vinyl on that they will come off a lot easier than the painted ones because they are held on with nothing but glue. Another thing to think about the vinyl stripes is if you run it through a car wash it would come off because of the high pressure and scrubbing brushes. If you do change your mind you can take off the vinyl ones easier. If you put the painted ones on and wanted to change you could always get them painted over but it would cost a little money.


If you clear over the vinyl you will either have to clear the whole panel or you can do a spot job but then if it is a dark colored car it will look like crap because you can see where the clear stopped and started.

If it was me doing it I could probally do a TA for about $300.

$190 - paint time
$105 - paint and materials

and that does include sanding and rubbing the panels and clearing the entire panels that I did the stripes on.

*EDIT*
If you do just paint and clear the stripes it will leave a bad tape line that will look and feel bad.

iamsparc

If you wanted it to look show quality, paint. If you are doing it just to switch things up and don't really want to pay high dollar for premium, then (i guess) go for the vinyl.

My old Dakota SS was red with white stripes. It was ALWAYS garage kept and I kept it in immaculate condition. I owned it a little more than 3 yrs. About 2 yrs into my ownership with that truck, along with some fading, the white vinyl stripes on one side started to crack and show nice red paint through the cracks. Quite ugly on such a good looking truck. It ruined the entire effect. And this stripe job was done by the dealer when I purchased the truck new. I ended up selling the truck for unrelated reasons, but if I had kept the truck, I would have ended up having to have those stripes taken off, and new ones put on. At that point, the savings on using vinyl over paint becomes less and less.

-Mike