Copper Lexus RX 350: Front End PPF and a Tour of Every Hidden Edge

A Color Worth Keeping

Most RX 350s you see are white, silver or black. This one is copper, a warm metallic that goes from burnt orange in the sun to a deep bronze in the shade, and it's the reason the owner wanted the front of the car protected. A color like this is easy to love and hard to match if a panel ever needs paint.

The job was paint protection film (PPF) on the front end, followed by a ceramic coating. PPF is a clear urethane film that takes rock chips and scuffs in place of the paint, and when it's installed well you shouldn't be able to tell it's there. Whether you can tell comes down almost entirely to the edges, so in this post I'm going to walk you around the car one edge at a time.

Why the Edges Matter So Much

The middle of a panel is the easy part. Any decent installer can get film to lie flat on the center of a hood. The edge is where the film has to stop, and how it stops decides three things. It decides whether you can see a line, whether dirt builds up along it, and whether it starts to lift a couple of years down the road.

Our answer is to make the film end somewhere you can't see. We use extended patterns that give us extra material at each edge, and that extra film gets wrapped around the back of the panel or tucked into a gap. Before any of it goes on, the edges are cleaned thoroughly, because film won't stay stuck to dirt.

The Front of the Hood

Open the hood and look at the underside of the leading edge. That's where the film ends on this RX. It's rolled over the front lip and pressed down on the inside, and there's a photo of that being done with the hood up. From the outside, the paint simply looks like paint all the way to the edge.

The Back of the Hood

The rear edge of the hood, up by the windshield, is one that often gets skipped because nobody looks there. We trim the film by hand along that edge so it follows the panel exactly. You can see the blade work in the photos. It's slow, and it's the kind of thing you only appreciate when you're washing the car and there's no ragged edge to catch your towel.

The Fenders

The fenders are done with the hood open. That exposes the top edge of the fender, where it meets the engine bay, and lets us tuck the film down over it. In the photos you can see the piece being lined up, stretched over the curve above the wheel, and then worked in by hand along that top edge.

The front corner is the tricky spot, where the fender comes to a point against the headlight. The film has to be smoothed right into that seam without trapping any liquid, first with fingertips and then with a squeegee.

The Mirrors

For their size, mirrors are the hardest parts on any car. A mirror cap curves in every direction at once, so the film has to be stretched evenly all the way around or it will bunch up on one side. They also sit out in the wind collecting bugs and gravel, so they're well worth doing.

The Bumper

The top of the bumper tucks under the hood line, so that edge is worked with the hood open too. The big Lexus grille takes up most of the front of the car, and the painted section around it gets covered and squeegeed down toward the grille opening.

Then the Coating

With the film on, the whole car was ceramic coated, painted panels and film together.

The coating makes the surface chemically resistant, so bugs, bird droppings and hard water have a much harder time leaving a stain. It also makes everything slick, so the car is easier to wash. That helps the film in particular, because the slick feel of new PPF fades within about six months on every brand, and a coating on top keeps it cleaning up easily. On a copper metallic, it adds a nice bit of depth too.

The Result

Out in the sun, the copper does its thing, and the front of the car looks completely untouched. There are no lines across the hood, no visible edges on the fenders, and nothing around the mirrors to give the film away.

The film is Ultrafit, with a 10 year warranty against lifting and discoloring. Wrapped edges are a big part of why we're comfortable standing behind the lifting half of that.

Want to See the Edges for Yourself?

We're a paint protection film, ceramic coating and window tint shop in Plano, TX, and we protect daily drivers and weekend cars for owners from Frisco, Allen, McKinney, Richardson and Dallas. Stop by and we'll show you a finished car up close, open the hood, and let you look for the film. There's no pressure, and we're always happy to talk cars.

(469) 954-9735

info@humblecrewautospa.com

535 Talbert Drive STE 113, Plano, TX 75093

Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 5:30 pm