AMIC

After washing my car last night, and finding yet more rock chips and bug residue, I'm finally going to bite the bullet and get a clear bra to minimize anymore damage.

Anyone know of a good place in Austin to get a clear bra put on?

pimpin-tl

San Antonio, there is one. Mobile Tint does Llumar Clear Bra which is more transparent than the 3M stuff.

123456SPEED

I've used SunTint on Burnet for window tinting on 3 cars, no problems, I saw they do clear bra too. My car had clearbra on the hood when I bought it. It protected fine, but developed ugly lines on the edge from waxing, I couldn't remove and started getting under the edge too. I removed the clear bra, and it was yellowed. It left a mark across my hood.
Clearbra does protect the paint but I prefer the cleaner look without it.
Clearbra is not cheap, I've read of some people that have used some kind of heavier clearcoat paint applied that doesn't cost much more than clearbra and looks better.

AMIC

I just looked at Suntint and they don't use 3M, they use Clearshield. What have been people's experience with Clearshield?

123456SPEED

I think in the early days 3M was best, but now I think most all are as good, but I'm no expert.

Hawhyen51

3M recently introduced a new generation of PPF and you can get info here. It's also the only film with a clearcoat layer. Clearshield is manufactured by Bekaert and info can be found at their site. Bekaert is the manufacturer of Solargard window film. Another film to look into is Llumar and they claim they have the clearest film. IMO, 3M is the more popular and most used film. They have been in the business longer than their competitors and constantly R&D their product. I think this is like a 4th gen film.

pimpin-tl

Problem is clearcoat is what scartches easy on the clearbras. The non-clear coat ones you never see scratches but you need to keep a good wax coat on them.

All clear bras are yellow even when installed new. They have a yellow look to them.

skijunkie

iTrader: (1)

http://www.thedingcompany.com/

They are in south austin. I have not yet gotten a clear bra but this was the only place I could find in Austin that does it and uses 3M. They are an XPEL certified site. When you get your clear bra let us Austinites know who you used and how it turned out.

AMIC

Thanks for the suggestion. I called them and got some info. They use both 3M and Ventureshield. The guy I spoke with said he prefers the Ventureshield and says he thinks it is of higher quality than the 3M. He said the 3M gives a very noticable orange peel look and doesn't stretch as well. He charges the same for both films.

I did some searching on the forum about Ventureshield and some like it and some don't. Mainly because it doesn't have the clearcoat. I might be leaning towards the Ventureshield just so I don't have the orange peel look. With an ABP I feel it might show more. The price seems pretty good, $550 and my hubby can get a discount if he does his car too.

AMIC

I finally got my clear bra installed. I got it done at The Ding Company. He did a good job despite the fact that my car is a year old and there are already rock chips on the front end. I went with the VentureShield. It looks very clear. You really can't see it until you get right up close to it. There are bubbles and imperfections around the rock chips and it really seems to bring out the areas where I applied touch-up paint.

I got a really good deal at $550 and my husband took his S2000 to him also and he did his for $275 since it was smaller and that inlcuded a 25% discount for multiple cars. I definitely recommend him. The only part that sucked was the drive back and forth down there from where we live up north .

I plan to get her cleaned up this weekend and take some picture of the reflections to see how cloudy the image is since I see another thread of someone complaining of that.

skijunkie

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the update. I look forward to seeing the pictures.

AMIC

Here are a few pics of the clear bra.



From the following shots, you can definitely tell that there is a difference in the reflection, but it's not too cloudy at all.





In the next one you can see the worst of the imperfections attributed to chips already in the paint.

skijunkie

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the pics. Nice. Did you get the headlight film as well? How did the side mirrors turn out?

AMIC

I didn't get the headlight film. He was gonna charge $100 more for that. The side mirrors are ok. It only covers the back side and not over the top.

mn2trance

That chip is nothing compared to the numerous ones I've gotten on my car. I would go the clear bra route, but with the numerous scrapes to the bottom of my front A-Spec lip, I don't know how well that'll wrap around it.

AMIC

It definitely shows all the scrapes and chips and makes them look like bubbles. The guy at the shop actually took a syringe and tried to get some of the air out of those, but because the chips are somewhat deep it doesn't adhere to those spots very well.