Dear LR4 drivers,
Land Rover Guru does have a point…if you don’t want off road “love bites,” then don’t go off road.
That said, I spend a lot of time off-road, and want to provide a bit more protection for my exterior. There are some recent products to give auto enthusiasts a variety of choices for paint and windscreen protection. The jury is still out on these products as they are so new and untested (at least for the off-road market versus the race-track scene) that I have seen nothing useful regarding their effectiveness. Furthermore, as Land Rover Guru points out…most off-roaders want a few “rough edges” on their machines anyway. To wrap up one’s man machine in a plastic coverall (visions of trojans here come to mind...) detracts from the sporting nature of a mud-covered truck. Let’s face it: what kind of true warrior arrives without the scars of battle? In spite of this argument…I actually want to protect my exterior, so I have been doing some investigating in this area and will share what I have uncovered.
First, to answer the original question, I am pretty certain there are no temporary applications for paint protection (other than saran-wrapping your machine!) The products on the market are called “paint protection films” and have an expected lifespan of 5 years; thus they are semi-permanent in nature—apply and forget. I first ran across these applications in South Africa, and it was a 3M product. You can find out more about this family of “3M Paint Protection Film” products at their website. However, I have found their customer service unhelpful, and I don’t think one can apply 3M films outside an authorized dealer or distributor (meaning high cost). That probably explains why they have been unhelpful: I am a rather small fish in 3M’s global production. So I have had limited interested in the 3M films.
If you Google “Paint Protection Film,” you can learn more about the variety of other films and applications out there. For example, another company which manufactures such films is from the company XPEL, Homepage
http://www.xpel.com/ and product line page
http://www.xpel.com/products/default.asp ; they even have a “do-it-yourself” line of products,
http://www.xpel.com/diy_paint_protection/ . I have recently purchased the DIY clear protection film for my doors and am going to “do it myself” and see what I think before purchasing full-size sheets to cover the bonnet/hood and other high risk areas. XPEL manufactures films to cover the entire LR4 body, but I do not know how difficult applying these films myself will be (here in Africa…there are no companies (outside South Africa) doing such work even if I was willing to pay the prices to "glue" the stuff on).
As I mentioned, there is also the possibility of windshield protection. One such company is Clear Plex, homepage
http://www.clearplex.com/ . These products claim to add layered plastic protection to the windscreen glass. Again, I have seen no information whether these products work, but if they do actually protect the glass from flying object damage, then they will be worth the high cost (at least to me). I have already replaced my LR4’s windshield once from a large (nickel-sized) glass pit which started spider-webbing. It was made by a flying rock kicked up or fallen off a tractor-trailer on the Autobahn last summer (and that was from a European highway…not off road). That ended up being a $1200 job in Germany. In my opinion, it seems doubtful that such exterior glass applications will perform as advertised…but you never know. The military allegedly uses these film applications for its aircraft to protect the glass and the crews from the wide variety of flying objects they run into routinely. However, most people on other forums deny these windshield protection products even exist (they confuse them with the tinting films used in interior applications).
Currently, I am still in experimentation mode with the paint protection films and I am in observe mode with the exterior window protection films. No one can definitively prove the value of any of these expensive films, and there are no statistics out there to support any manufactures assertions to protect our vehicle exteriors. This is particularly true with off-road trucks where wear and damage is often going to be much more significant than in street cars (think tree limb thwacking your door and putting a hole in your vehicle verses some dude scraping his door by accident against your truck in the parking lot). For an example of the questionable utility of the film application, I had a large sheet metal garage door blow off its hinges here in Africa a few months ago and then came crashing down on the hood of my LR4. It dented the hood and scratched it up quite a bit. The plastic “hood wind deflector” [Part # LR006512] actually helped to break up most of the energy of the falling door, but there was still some pretty obvious minor damage. A visit to the dealer, however, buffed out all the scratches and now it is very hard to see the dent. Would paint protection film have done any better? To me that would seem doubtful, and this confirms the comments about the durability of the LR4 paint job and body…fortunately! If you opt for a custom-made external covering like rubber/plastic strap-on covering…that could be another story. But that may make your truck look like an executioner…or the gimp.
I don’t know anything about paint sealants like permapaint paint guard; one can view their products at
http://permaplate.com/cms/index.php/products-paintguard.html to find out more. I am, however, suspect of anything using "the latest nano-technology" to give a 4X4 truck more protection.
To the group: If I ever get any results from my paint protection film experiment…I will add it my conclusion to this thread or another, but I imagine that will take quite some time. I hope others out there have some experience, knowledge, or information that they are willing to share.
Happy Driving,
Land Rover Joe
