Everybody’s Scalin’ – Applying a Vinyl Wrap to a Wraith Spawn

Happy Friday! I made a post last week about getting a custom wrap for my Axial Wraith Spawn from the folks at FreqEskinz, and late last week a UPS box showed up at my door. What came out of the package is what you see above – a fresh sheet-o-stickers. For those curious on how a vinyl wrap is installed, here is the basic process.

You want to start out by removing all the decals and cleaning the body with alcohol. Note that this body was beat up pretty good in our review so that’s why even after cleaning it looks a bit haggard. Hey, that’s why I wanted to wrap it in the first place!

As the headline picture shows, the kit comes with pre-cut individual panels. With the surface clean you can start applying panels. Do your best to make them line up and make sure you don’t rub down sections that start to crease. We will handle that in a bit. I tend to focus on one whole quadrant at a time and go that way. The pics above show the front of the rig.

To really get the vinyl to take to the body you’ll want to use a heat gun. With just a quick 3 second shot of heat the vinyl becomes very pliable and grabs the body. This is where you get rid of the bubbles and seal edges. You can smooth out everything (from the center out!) with a cheap squeegee or your fingers.

With everything applied, it was time to use a hobby knife to cut out the windshield as well as trim other certain sections around the wheel wells.

The body is  pretty much ready to mount! The last step involves making sure you cut out your screw holes. I do it by poking them with a hobby knife and twisting.

And voila! Here’s my “Big Squid RC Wrecking Rod” Mega Truck….err, I mean Axial Wraith Spawn. So that’s all it takes. I got everything applied in about 45 minutes. A high quality vinyl wrap is quickly becoming a viable alternative to those who want a trick paint job, minus the actual paint. Thanks to Neal @ FreqEskinz for working with me to purty up my Wraith. It’s a shame that it will probably never be this clean again!

As for the wild rubber that the truck is sporting, those are the new RC4WD 2.2 Mud Basher tractor tires. Look for a review coming up very soon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go hit the trail. Have a great weekend and hopefully you can get some trigger time in!

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