Vinyl Prep

Clockwise from upper left: Rendering drawings of the vinyl design are key to planning the project, but the prep work is equally as important—and tedious.

An air-driven rotating Crud Thug finishing wheel is a useful tool for removing the existing graphics, but you must use caution not to trash the base paint below it.

Plan to spend serious amounts of time compounding, cleaning and buffing the surface to remove oxidation that the old graphics might have left in place.

In the end, installing vinyl graphics isn’t as difficult as it is time-consuming.