While the winter is in full swing, it is obviously hard to get any good content out. During my drive down from NJ to NC, I noticed that I had developed a bubble under the 3M wrap on my car. I can only assume that this pocket of air was caused by water melting off my hood, entering a lifted section and then forcing its way further down into the panel.
The gap caused by "popping" the air bubble in the wrap.
To remedy this situation I wanted to take as much care as I could in with preserving the area. First I used a razor blade to "pop" the affected air pocket. Once this was done I trimmed away the damaged pieces that no longer had any adhesive left. Now, because I did not have any new vinyl on hand, I used 3M clear repair tape from Pep Boys to hold the fresh edges down so that no more damage could occour in the area.
Once I received the new wrap piece (only around $5 on Amazon) I removed the 3M tape, and cut a piece around the size that I needed (actually slightly larger to account for shrink). With the headlight off I used a heat gun to make sure that all pieces of the new patch vinyl were adhered to the body with no air underneath at all. I also made sure to cover the back under the headlight to prevent any more lift, this is in part because of the nature of putting a flat piece on a curved surface as it leaves a lifted section unless cut or significantly heated and stretched.
It has now been over a week and it seems like my fix has done a great job standing up to more snow and ice. The process took me about 10-20 minutes, and was a much better alternative than re-wrapping the front bumper! Hopefully soon I can refinish the passenger side headlight to remove the nasty scrapes that it came with when shipped from Germany (came from a D3 R Design).
Stopped at a Royal Farms somewhere on the Eastern Shore. The roads were absolutely horrible, un-plowed and covered in snowdrifts from the wind sweeping across farmland. This weather is what I think damaged my wrap.