Race Car Decal Wrap - Matters Of Style

Here’s how it looks when placing the wrap over a rivet. It may look good now, but sooner or later the wrap will pull loose, so it’s better to go ahead and cut away the portions of the wrap covering any rivets right away while it is still down tight.

Once the nose portion of the wrap is pressed down, cut away the material at the seam where the plastic nose starts for a nice, clean look.

You never know exactly how the hood panel is going to fall across the car, so instead of taking a chance that the hood sponsor’s logo will fall across the seam between the hood and nose, Starnes prints it separately. Once the base vinyl is down he measures and places the main sponsor’s logo.

Starnes applies the numbers to the roof. By always working from the center of the decal out, it makes it easier to negotiate such obstacles as the ridges in the molded roof.

As part of the comprehensive wrap, Starnes also includes a section for the sides of the nose that integrates with the panel that extends down the side of the car. In order to get a cohesive visual look, use a long straightedge to ensure the stripes match up across the expanse of the wheel opening.

Although it’s all on one backing sheet, there are actually two separate decals here. To make sure the alignment stays consistent, Starnes cuts a hole in the backing so that he can put down tape markers for both sections.

Here you can see the bottom section of the graphic going down. For a cleaner look, Starnes trims the decal away from the lower valance, but the section where the valance transitions into the fender flare creates some weird compound curves and getting a straight cut can be tricky. One trick is to lay down a piece of masking tape to help you keep the cut line straight and visualize where you want it to go.

Once the wrap is down, Starnes goes back and cuts out any spots where he laid vinyl over rivets.

Adding items like the hood pin scuff plates after the wrap has been finished makes for a nice, clean installation with no annoying cut lines in the vinyl visible.

A few graphic elements on the nose complete the look of the car. This includes a personal logo that Starnes created for the racer of a skull-and-crossed connecting rod, a nod to old-school racing with a decal representing a riveted steel plate over the headlight openings and a fun tweak to the typical branding games by labeling this race car a “Chevette.”

By using a wrap to print almost all of the graphic elements on one sheet, the contingency level sponsors are also printed directly on the vinyl so that they are properly spaced and all the same size for a good look. But if you want to add another sponsor decal later, it will stick to the vinyl with no problems.

One quirk of current wrap printing technology is that it can’t print neon colors. Starnes will design with lots of high-contrast neon because he says it looks good on the racetrack, but that requires cutting the neon colors from a separate piece of vinyl and applying it to the wrap after it’s printed. Once the neon vinyl is applied, Starnes laminates it all (he uses Arlon 3420 Gloss) that creates a clear protective layer that protects the design from scratches and helps it last longer.

One size does not fit all. For local customers, Starnes says he often travels to their shops to measure their race cars himself. But when that’s not possible because of distance he sends customers this simple measurement chart. By using these measurements Starnes is able to ensure that the decals are cut to the right size, but that all the critical logos are properly placed and sized so that the finished product looks as good as possible. When filling out a chart like this, it’s also a good idea to indicate the color of each body panel so that your designer can help integrate the colors on the wrap properly.

The finished product ready to hit the track.

Lots of wrap companies specialize in only Dirt or Asphalt Late Models, but one of the more interesting things we learned about Star Graphix is that it regularly works with lower level cars. This is Starnes’s brother’s Street Stock, for example. You can see how a simple decal wrap can really dress up a race car. CT