S60R - Wrap Repair + Driving the Eastern Shore

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.

S60R - Vinyl Wrap

As my winter break is finally wrapping up I managed to get some time to take a few shots of my new wrap! This wrap was done by iDetail here in northen New Jersey. It is a full panel off wrap using 3M Intense Gloss Blue. On top of the blue wrap, I also had the shop wrap the trim around the windows to give it more of a Polestar look. 

These shots are from the Skylands Manor in Ringwood, New Jersey which is one of my favorite sport to shoot during the summer and fall. (This was my first time visiting the park during the winter.)

For anyone wondering, the cost of this wrap was around $2700, which is a lot, but definitely worth it for a better than paint way to change the color of your car.

850R - Better and Brighter Tail Light Installation

The greatest enemy when working on an older car is time itself. Over time things like rubber and plastic degrade due to exposure to the elements, its just something you cant control. I ran into this issue originally when removing the new taillights that we had purchased from LKQ Greensboro. The 850 Estate that I removed them from had dry, cracking, rear trim. I had hoped that this was a isolated case, but when I went to install the new lights on the 850R I found that the rear plastic on our car was also in a sad state of brittleness. This discovery did not hamper the installation, however I had to take extra care to remove the panel clips and make sure the plastic wasn't being stressed. Unfortunately in this installation I ended up cracking one of the rear speaker grilles.

Removal and installation of the tail lights is a simple process, needing only an 8mm socket, and extension, a small ratchet, and some thin hands. The upper light pieces are very easy to remove, as both of the 8mm bolts are unobstructed by any trim panels or wires, and this piece can be removed only be removing the rear tweeter cover.

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The D pillar cleaned up after removing the upper light assembally.

On the 850 wagon the lower tail light assembly is where the real fun stuff is. To get the the bolts holding the lower section, almost all of the trim pieces around the rear hatch need to be moved. On the drivers side I had a much easier time with this process as many of the clips were already broken or moved already. (I am assuming this is from one of the many rear repairs done by the dealer at some point). To get to these bolts you will certainly need a ratchet extension and some thin hands. Almost all of these bolts you will need to put on and off using your hand so that they do not fall down into the abyss below the light assembly. To make matter worse, the light harness that comes out has a much shorter loom length than the upper light, making it much harder to move it out of the way when trying to grab a bolt.

The new light with the red corner piece installed vs the old piece.

The lower light removed from the drivers side. A lot of junk has built up behind these over the years!

One thing I have to say is that being able to work on a junkyard car before your own is a great learning experience. This process is pretty straight forward, but knowing what tools I needed, and how the lights were attached before hand took out any guess work I had to do when swapping the housings out. The passenger side took me a bit more time as one of the panels that I easily removed on the drivers side was being very stubborn and required me to blindly undo a bolt using my hand instead of the socket. For this job I really recommend that you purchase a magnet-snake tool that can grab any bolts that may fall down into the car during this project.

A comparison shot: new on the left, old on the right.

Overall the project took less than an hour. Even someone with little mechanical skill can get this done. Unfortunately by the time I finished it was already getting dark so the final shots do not accurately show the progression from old to new.

As a note, I would like to mention this will probably be the last update on the 850R until January when Steve and I return from our college winter break. Hopefully then we will be able to work on installing the exhaust as well as the new intake manifold. Do worry though, updates on my personal vehicle (my 2012 S60 R Design) will still be coming over the break. Have a happy holidays!