(Vintage style 'la-di-da music) So before we get started let's take a
look at the tools that I'm gonna be using to get this job done. Obviously
we've got the vitally important black carbon fiber vinyl. This is 3m wrap film
series 1080. I've got a measuring device. Installation tape. A roll of knifeless
tape, this one is called 'Wrap-Cut'. A squeegee. A sharp knife. A bottle of
alcohol, no not the drinking kind, it's not that kind of video. A microfiber
cloth and last but by absolutely no means least, a hairdryer. A heat gun
would be better but I haven't got a heat gun so a hair dryer's gonna have to do.
There'll be links in the description of this video to where you can find all of
the stuff that I'm using. Now with all jobs to do with adhesives or painting, preparation is the most important phase. I actually washed the tank over yesterday
using just water and washing up liquid. Important not to use any kind of car
shampoo for this stage because it might have some sort of a wax in it which will
leave a residue on the tank that we don't want. The reason I washed the tank
yesterday is so that today it would be completely dry because any moisture
hiding in cracks and crevices can affect how the vinyl sticks and cause it later
to lift up. For the next step we need to get rid of any stickers or trim panels
that are get in the way. The place I bought the tank from has obviously
already removed the side plastic trim panel so don't have to worry about those
but we are going to need to get rid of these stickers telling me to read the
owner's manual and I can only use unleaded petrol but I already know those
so I think I'm gonna be ok without them. Obviously this sticker is at least ten
years old so it's left a horrible sticky residue on there. We will deal with that
in a minute. I saw on a tips and tricks video the other day that a good
way to do this is with a piece of fishing line. You just put the fishing
line under the edge and then saw the sticker off. It sounds like a great idea.
If only I had some fishing line! So now our tank is mostly clear of all
stickers and things but we need to do another stage of cleaning to get rid of... well for a start this horrendous sticky residue here and also
any grease, road tar wax, residues or anything because any kind of wax coating
on the paintwork will actually cause the vinyl not to stick as well. This is where
the alcohol comes into play. Pour a healthy dose on to my microfiber cloth and it's doing a lovely job of taking off that glue there. Smells like tequila! Give the whole thing a nice
good solid rubbing... That's what she said... ....paying special attention to yourgrooves
your cracks and your holes... also what she said... ...clean around this rim as well... this is getting ridiculous...
there we go that's all nice and clean and we're ready to stick some stuff onto
it. Now the vinyll that I've got is 50cm wide and a meter and a half
long. Although you could possibly wrap this tank in one piece if
you were a highly skilled professional vinyl wrapper, I can't because the vinyl
I've got isn't wide enough and also I'm not a highly skilled professional vinyl
wrapper! So this is where this stuff comes into play. The wrap cut knifeless
tape. Stick this stuff onto the tank before the vinyl and it's actually made
up of two parts. There's the sticky backing and then there's the filament
stuck onto that and when you pull the filament through the vinyl, it gives
you a perfect cut hence the name, knifeless tape. What I plan to do is to follow this
line up the back here, come across this shoulder edge
and then off the front of the tank giving me a nice contoured split line
which follows the edge of the body line of the tank. Before I can get on and
actually stick anything down here I need to figure out exactly which one of these
three lines I'm gonna follow. They've got the top line which goes over here.
There's a middle one here and then the bottom one comes right down here to the
corner. Ideally I would quite like to follow this edge all the way down to the
corner here but the question is do Ihave enough vinyl to go from this corner all the way
over the top and to reach to this corner? This is where the insulation tape comes
into play because we can take our measuring device. Stick a piece of tape
from one end which we will trim off at exactly 50 centimeters. So when I now
take my 50 centimeters long piece of tape and we can stick it down following
the contours of the tank and see without a shadow of a doubt the vinyl will only
reach to here. We could stretch it by 2 centimeters to get it the full length
but I think that's a bit risky to be honest. So what about if I were to go
sideways across? Now if I put my piece of tape over the furthest forward part of
the tank that I'm gonna go to down here, unfortunately we can see this is exactly
the same problem. We have a gap of nearly 7cm there so that answers two
questions for us. First of all we're gonna have to follow this upper line
because otherwise we're not going to reach far enough into the corner and the
second answer is that we've got more distance this way than we have this way,
so the vinyl is going to be going along the tank. I really should have figured this
out before I did the cleaning because now I've got insulation tape sticky
residue nonsense on the tank, I need to clean it again! But now what I'm gonna do
is take the wrap cut. The filament of this stuff is off to one side of the tape and
the tape itself isn't very flexible, so what that means is if I've
got tight corners going to the left I'm gonna want to keep tape with the
filament on the left. I've got a soft curve here, a soft curve here and a
pretty tight curve here, so I'm gonna want to have the filament on the upper
edge. This means starting from the front here... and by pulling the tape tight
with a finger we can follow shape of this body line all the way down
off the edge of the tank. I don't want this moving around once I'm plonking about with sticky vinyl on top. I'm not happy with how this looks here so
thankfully what you can do is pull it back again. So that's going to be our seam on
the left hand side between the two pieces of vinyl following all the way
down that body line from front to back. And through the wonders of video trickery, the other side is already done! Now we've got 2 split lines marked out front to
back and we're almost ready to put some vinyl on. But first we have to do another
run on each side with the wrap cut tape because we're going to overlap the two
pieces of film. Here's one piece, there's the other piece and then the wrap cut is
going to cut through both of those and what that means is we're gonna be left
with the excess here underneath the second piece of film and that's gonna be
messy trying to get it all out. So what I'm gonna do here is another run of this
tape parallel to the first piece. This one doesn't have to be so exact, just has
to roughly follow the shape of that first piece of tape. To make sure we don't get these mixed up,
I'm gonna spread them a little bit further apart like that. What that's
going to allow us to do is to lay the top piece on, overlap it over this tape and
then using this second line we'll cut through that and get rid of the excess. Then we've only got a tiny tiny little bit of excess that we then have to remove
later on. If it's not obvious what's happening here, just be patient. It'll all
become clear when we actually do it. Incidentally, 3m do actually have a
product called tri-line which is designed exactly for this purpose and
it's called tri line because it's one piece of tape that has three filaments in
it. So when you lay down this line you've automatically got parallel filaments
that you can use to create these butt joints. And obviously the workshop elf
has already done the other side! We are now ready to stick some vinyl onto this
tank. Obviously once again I've touched it quite a lot throughout that process with
my dirty digits. I'm just gonna give it another wipe. Now we actually need to cut
out our first piece of vinyl. I have got a pair of scissors here. These weren't in
the initial tool lineup, but I'm sure you can cut me a little slack... CUT ME A LITTLE SLACK! !:D ...and that leaves us
another 80 centimetres... I said millimeters earlier on didn't I!
I meant centimetres... to hopefully get our side pieces done. Hairdryer and knife
at the ready, we can actually stick something down. Now the data sheet that
goes along with this vinyl stuff says you need to be working in environment of
at least 16 degrees centigrade and also ideally whatever you're wrapping should
have been in that environment for at least eight hours before you start so
that everything is nice and warm. Because as it gets colder, the adhesive
becomes less effective, the vinyl becomes less flexible and your job's gonna be a
lot more difficult than it needs to be. So I'm just gonna get stuck in. I'll be
honest I hate this bit. The times I've done this before, it always seems like the most
goes wrong right at the very beginning! Fold that like that so I can get this central,
without worrying about it sticking to the rest of the tank and start on that edge
there. And we have made contact! Okay so
straight away we're going to run into problems here because we're going on a
curve in that direction that's also curving in this direction. So what I'm
actually gonna do is pull the backing all right off. Working towards myself so that I
can stop the tank from sliding away. A little bit of heat from the hairdryer to
make it nice and soft and flexible and then try and give it a little bit a
stretch.... Oh F@#§... BEEP!... and then try and give this a little bit of a stretch over the hump of
the tank. I'm not stretching it like crazy, because tension is not our friend
in this situation. And hopefully now just gently squeegee out these
wrinkles. Maybe even by repositioning a little bit. Give it a little bit of
warmth and then we can very gently put that into place. (Jazzy prohibition period style music) We want to try as much as possible to
flatten it past our knifeless tape here because you want to have as
little stretching over the tape area as possible because then there'll be less likelihood of the vinyl actually shrinking back. What we can also do to help ourselves
out a little bit here is we can actually just cut this back and
relieve some of the tension in our vinyl down here. Looking good so far. When you
come to this area we can see we've got a little bit of tension going on there.
Lift that up to get rid of that big wrinkle. Get a bit of warmth in there so it shrinks back. So now what I want to do, because I want to be able to get to this corner and because we've got scalloped sort of a feature
here. Warm this very gently and then try and very softly stretch it over that edge. So in order to get access to this area in here, I'm gonna
make a relief cut which is going to release the tension in this space of the
vinyl. (SLIIICE!) That's suddenly released this tension here and made everything a bit
easier for us in this area, in orde for us to be able to work the vinyl on to that
edge there. Now we've done that we can cut this side piece out again to relieve
some of the tension and the crumpling up that is going on in this corner here. (More music from Al Capones Ipod, you sheee!) So now we've got the situation where
we wanna deal with this bit here. The 3m datasheet says to apply a little bit
of heat... Think about it, first you want to get rid of these air bubbles here. Back to the original plan...
and then from the lowest point apply the pressure and work back towards the edges. This ensures that you get an even amount of tension across all of this area, rather
than it just spanning the gap. We've come right to that front edge now. Use a thumb just to
push the vinyl around the corner there and then we can trim it off. And that is
that side all nicely flattened down. With no air bubbles, no ripples. So to save
you the torture of watching me do the other side, I'll catch you when we get to the
next stage.... And there we go, that's the whole front edge now nicely tucked
around the corner there. Stuck down all the way along our soon to be join-lines. Now start off by doing a rough trim of the excess here. The rest of it,I'm
gonna smooth down as much as possible. Areas like this here we've got lots
of wrinkles so I'm just gonna trim around that. There we go! Now as long as I get
that tucked away back on the bike before my OCD starts having a hissy fit, think it
can stay as it is. So now, very excitingly, we can March onwards to the
first bit of using our amazing knifeless tape! So what we do with this stuff is
first of all pull it away from the body work. Make a nick in the red part
of the tape just up to the filament. That allows us to actually remove the
red tape from the end there. Then, hold down the red piece. Give the filament a tug
and then actually pull it through the vinyl, all the way to the very end. Now we can actually take this excess piece and simply remove
it! Important not to forget the backing to the knifeless tape And then just to make sure that
we're sitting properly on the area that we just cut through. Squeegee it all back
down again. Give it a little bit of heat just in case it wants to shrink back a bit,
because I'd rather have this shrunk back before we get to making the main
cut. There we go so now I'll get on with the next piece of vinyl. We're gonna
need a piece that is fifty and then with a depth of let's say 35 just have a
little bit of extra to play with. (Plinky Plunky Charleston style musical wanderings) We have made contact! Gonna work into this corner here. (Gatsby's jukebox plays on) Tiny little bit of a stretch there just to
get around this slight curve. And there we go. At that back edge we are at the tape. And we are at that edge. In this area we're
gonna have to come around the corner a little bit so (hair dryer) there we go.We are up to the corner there as well. A little trick I learnt from the the 'CK Wraps'
channel. I would recommend you have a look. I learnt a lot of stuff from
watching that guy's videos. If you stretch around a corner like that and
then heat it.(Hair Dryer) The vinyl actually shrinks around the corner and pulls itself into
that corner. (Jazzy jingly Junes) So there we are on that front edge. A little bit of wrinklage going on here. Hopefully, should be able to just loosen that off... ... and then... There we go, that is down. Don't need to worry
about coming too far into this area because we need to be able to stick the
trim panel back onto this and that's held on with double-sided sticky tape so
rather be sticking to metalwork than to vinyl. And the last bit is this little
back corner (Hair Dryer) a bit of warmth along the edge andtry and do the little corner trick down here again. (Hair Dryer) Stretch it around the corner (Hair Dryer) And Bosh! We are all in on this side
that was far easier than the top. That's amazed even me how quickly that went
together. So now we can trim this off. (Muuuuuusic) So now, what will happen when we pull this
filament through, it's gonna cut both the top piece and the bottom piece at the
same time giving us a perfect butt joint between the two. Take off the red bit. Give it a tug to get it started and then we are away. Then you just pull it through What that will now allow us to do, is to carefully remove this piece. Then you need to remove a red piece from the tape
and also, the excess that was left over from our first piece of vinyl. Pull both of those
out. Pulling low and away from the second piece, so that we don't disturb it too much. Hoping that it doesn't break like that
because that would be disastrous. But, luckily we have another end! (Tinky tonky, honk plonky music) Smooth that back down. Oh, it's made a horrible job of the cut there!
Yeah, so my sage words of advice would be to get the 3m product because this one
has done a pretty terrible job sadly. Well we have a joint, that is relatively neat but I've seen better. I'm not really happy with that. Now because the um, as you pull
the wrap cut through it causes micro stretches in the material, I'm just going to
give a bit of warmth to make sure that we can make them sit completely flat to
each other. (Hair Dryer) There we go, for better or for worse, there's that join done. Now all that's left on this side is just to trim off this last tail end piece and smooth it down. There we go! One side finished. With a join mostly following the body line. For some reason the tape has
actually decided to cut the corner and here we've got a little bit of a zigzag but
I'll be honest I've seen worse. So now we move swiftly on to the other side which
obviously is going to be just a mirror image of the first side hopefully with a
more successful cut along this tape. (Trumpty-trumpety music) Here we are down at the front. Once again
we've got a little bit of a wrinkle here hopefully we should be able to just (SNAP!) pop
the whole thing off! Not quite what I was going for but did the job anyway (Scatmans Grandfather ad-libs to a brassy backing) Okay so a little bit of heat here
because I've got some wrinkles that I've introduced on my shoddy squeegee work (Hair Dryer) Gently lay that around the corner. Lovely stuff! Now we're coming to the area again
that I need to stretch a tiny bit around this corner. (Hair Dryer and then more jazzy charlestonian musings) Same corner trick again. Pull
it around the corner and then again hopefully when we heat it (Hair Dryer) It hugs that corner even tighter.
Magic. Once again got a little bit of air in this corner here. Pop it open like that. Give it a little bit heat (Hair Dryer) And then Bosh! We are in the corner. Right we're in the home stretch now!
Trim this bottom edge back. (The Gramaphone wails) (Hair Dryer) Lift up the red tape. Make a nick in the red bit. Pull the red bit away.
Tug at the end of the vinyl to get the cut started. and then we can haul away (Muuuuusic) And once again it's broken! (Mutey Trumpetousness) (Hair Dryer) Trim down at the
back here and that is the second joint all done! Which is in some ways better
in other ways worse than the first but ultimately does the job. We've got two
perfectly meeting together pieces of vinyl. Giving us a now overall
carbon-fiber covered petrol tank. But we're not quite done because still gotta
take care of this little drum skin which is in the space where the petrol cap is
going to go so to start with I'm going to give myself a fighting chance by cutting
about a centimeter and a half inside of the edge of the hole Then I'm just gonna gently heat around
this edge and slowly work it into the tank hole. (Hair Dryer) There we go we are, for all intents
and purposes, now finished. That is the tank all carbon-fiber vinyl'd up and I think
to be honest, given the money invested in this, 30 euros on the vinyl. The tape
stuff cost 15 euros about five years ago So for 45 euros and change, for things
like alcohol, I have now got a whole new look to my petrol tank and it's black so
it will now match the motorbike. Now of course in closing for those of you
who've done a bit of vinyl wrapping and know what you're talking about you're
probably screaming at the screen right now... "Andy! What about the post heating!?"
Well, I hear you because once you've finished, for areas of high tension. That
is areas where you've stretched it a lot so for me that would be areas like this
front corner here, we're supposed to heat the vinyl to around a hundred degrees
centigrade and what this does is it makes the vinyl forget what shape it
used to be. So this whole effect of you heating it and it returning back to the
way it was goes away and there's no chance of that vinyl then shrinking back
later when it's been left in the sun, when it gets hot, when it gets cold, when
it gets wet... So I'm gonna do what I can whether it gets hot enough, I don't know
but... (Hair Dryer) So there we go
all finished. That is my 3m carbon fiber effect vinyl wrap of my FZ1-N petrol tank.
It's now black beautiful carbon fiber effect. I'm not gonna say it was fast
because it is now dark outside. I'm not gonna say it was easy, I've sworn more
today than I think I have done in the last month. I wouldn't even go as far as
to say it was completely successful, these edges I'm not super happy with,
there's a couple of little blemishes and bits where I've over stretched it but on
the whole I think it looks good enough to stick on the bike. The beauty of it is
for 30 euros worth of vinyl I could tear it all off do it all again so I'm gonna
leave it for now see how it handles the weather and the outside world. Incidentally, in the technical spec sheets for this stuff on the 3M website they say
that once you've finished your wrap should leave the part or the vehicle in
the warm for a few hours after you've finished. Because this allows the adhesive to form a stronger bond with the bodywork and hopefully ultimately give you a
longer-lasting wrap. No problem for me I'm gonna leave this up here in the kitchen
tonight, I don't fancy trying to fix it to the bike in the dark and the cold!
That means I'm finished! I look forward to all of your comments telling me what
I did wrong, what I could have done better and I mean that sincerely. I'm
actually looking forward to it because it means that next time I do it,
hopefully I can do a better job. Already I think I've done a better job this time
that I did last time. Maybe next time it could be perfect. Anyway thanks very much
for watching, if you like this video please do give it a like. If you didn't
like it give it a dislike. It's all fine! And if you're not already please do
subscribe to the channel and click the little Bell thingy to make sure you get
notifications every time a new video comes out and you don't miss anything in
the future. So until next time, bye! (Sexy rock'n'rolley bluesey groove)
