3M'ing Front Bumper on F430

For those of you who have 3M'ed their F430's.
Have you also 3M'ed the two air intakes on the front bumper. They are matte black in colour, and the 3M foil is a littles shiny, so if the 3M foil is applied to them, does it change anything in the colour contrast and appearance of the bumper or does it still look very normal and how does the matte black react with the shiny 3M foil.
Thanks for your input

 

I had my car done but the people who did it, do not do the intakes, they did a crappy job so I am trying to find someone to redo it and do the intakes. I have seen one done and I like it from both an appearance and protection factor.

 

Yes, no. Of course it's a little shinier but it's better then being peppered with with chips.

 

Hi Carnut, I live in your area. When you find a good installer please let me know contact information. Thank you.

 

Ok, had my new F430 bumper 3M'ed yesterday, including the matte black air intake surfaces. Ofcourse the matte black surfaces are shinier now, but less than how they are seen on the pictures due to the camera flash. I think the result is very good.
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in your pictures they look like they are body colored...

 

It is only the light effect I guess. The air intakes are the stock dark flat grey colour, same as the rear diffuser.

 

Tarek, they look pretty good. I would like to see a picture at some distance from the front end of the car.

I was advised against doing the front intakes. Was told it would not look right or good. I am learning to live with the chips.

 

I too was a little skeptical about doing the front air intakes. Didn't do them on my first bumper, but I can't live with paint chips. They just drive me crazy. So I decided to have the air intakes covered on this new bumper and if I didn't like them, I could always remove the 3M foil off the air intake surface.
I am glad I did them. The result is very good and it looks neat. One of the reasons many applicators don't do them, is they are very difficult to cover because of their shape and it requires a great deal of patience and expertise to do them.
I haven't installed the new bumper on my F430 yet, but I plan to do it next Sunday. I will take a picture once the bumper is installed and post it for you.

 

So you opted to have the front bumper removed for installation?...I thought the 3m kit went on withou removing the bumper...or did you get a custom kit done?

also, for the area in the nostrils (the black parts), did they use a separate piece from the piece that wraps the bumper to ensure that you area ble to remove JUST that part without removing the bumper covering?--or did they just do it all as one ? (in which case you would either be faced with cutting on the car, or removing the entire bumper 3m if you wanted to get rid of just the nostril part covering...

any pics?

by the way..great color combo on your car, Tarek

 

The nostrils will collect the most rock damage.

Many installers won't do the nostrils because the film may take off some of the flat grey paint when you try to remove it. The suggestion was to clearcoat them so that there wasn't any issue. So I had them clearcoated before taking delivery.

That area is very difficult to film because of the curves and twists. It took about 3hrs and several tries to do both nostrils in my case. However, the result is spectacular once completed.

 

You mean you covered the air intakes as well? I thought only the curved flat surface which leads to the intake. Chips are not an issue with the actual intakes only the flat surface and covering the intakes could cause damage to the car.

 

The two air intakes are covered by two seperate parts of the 3M foil. The rest of the bumper is one piece of protective foil. You can't have it all covered by one piece because of the different levels.
The company who 3M'ed my car don't use the pre-cut foil. They make a custom kit using full sheets of the 3M material. They say it's better and the quality and finishing is more accurate and actually I think they are right. I saw them do the work, like surgeons.
This is my second bumper. Don't make fun of me, but I decided to have a spare bumper. The first one got so badly scraped from the bottom and had a few chips in the front and my F430 has hardly 1000miles on it. So I decided to buy a second one, install the skid plates and install it on the F430, then have the first one repainted and keep it as a spare. I am a bit touchy when my cars get scraped and chipped.
I will install the bumper and post some closeup pictures of the 3M job.

 

So you clearcoated them and filmed them. Do I understand you right?

 

No, not the intake grille ofcourse, only the surfaces leading to the air intakes have been filmed. You can see that in the pictures above.

 

The entire bumper including the nostrils has clearcoat.

 

Yes, I did the same thing, for the complete bumper. After it had been painted, they sprayed it with a clear coat. I had it done at Ferrari in Germany and they asked me if I wanted that. I don't know what the technical term is, but it's sort of a stabilzer or fixater. That's my own translation of the term. But it was applied immediately at the same stage of painting while the base colour was still wet. That is my understanding.