I ordered the stencil kit from Stencils & Stripes Unlimited and I have to say, I am not impressed with the quality in the least. First, the fender stencil part of the stripe is in three (3) pieces, instead of one stencil. This means that midway along the fender, you have to either butt the stencil stripes together, or overlap them, which means there will be a small section of the stripe where paint bleeds over giving a less than optimal result. Why this is not in one long piece is baffling to me. Also, the die cut portion was not cut all the way thru on the stencil part from the curved part of the hockey stick on back. It kept tearing the stencil every time I tried to pull away the portion of the stencil that is supposed to be removed. I kept cutting where the die cut mark was and would pull back only to get about an inch or so, and tear the stencil at what should have been a die cut line. This happened about 5 times before I just gave up and tore off the stencil altogether and simply free handed the stripe. This was on both sides.
Next, there was a big issue with the door part of the stencil. I am not sure if it was a mistake, but it looks like I got the stencil for the DX1 stiriping for the hood instead as the stencil is about 18" longer than the door stencil. Normally, this would not be a problem, as one would think they could simply cut the stencil to proper length so that the point of the stencil at the door handle is correct and the stencil gets cut off at the door edge for proper length. However, because the stripe tapers down and gets smaller as it goes toward the rear of the car, the width of the stripe where the door ends at the fender is not the same as the stencil on the fender itself. Again, this was an issue on both sides. In order to fix this, I had to pull the stencil from the fender all the way back to the door handle and free hand it back to the fender in order to get the proper width that will meet up correctly with the fender stencil. At this point, one must wonder why a stencil is being used, as everything that is supposed to be the benefit of using a stencil is lost, due to the fact I have to keep pulling the stencil back several feet and free handing it so it meets up correctly.
Finally, the top of the stencil along the fender that is supposed to be aligned with the top edge of the fender is not straight at all. The top alignment cut of the stencil goes from 5/8" to 1/4" and back to 5/8" again. If I had laid the stencil as instructed and used the top body line as a guide, my stripe would have been high at the front, dipped down in the middle, and raised back up toward the rear of the fender. This would have looked terrible. Again, what is the benefit of a stencil kit, if I constantly have to keep pulling back and free handing the tape line. Of course, this last issue was not really a problem in the end, as even though I corrected this when laying out the stencil, the die cut line was not cut all the way thru and I had to remove the entire stencil and free hand the entire stripe with my own roll of 3m tape. I could not use the fender stencil, as the stencil lacked of proper die cut would not allow me to peel back the area that was to be painted along the stripe portion of the stencil that was to remain in place.
All in all, I would never again buy this kit from them. The stencils are not properly die cut, are not the correct length, do not have the proper guide line at the top for following the edge of the fender, the directions are horrible, and the only measurements they give is from a copy of a copy of a copy of the assembly manual, which is to say, quite poor looking.
What is really sad, is that I spoke to Ralph who works at Stencils & Stripes Unlimited, before I purchased and was assured by him I would receive nothing but a top quality stencil kit This is NOT what I got. Me and the painter ended up spending more time trying to lay out this stencil and making it work, only to end up doing most of it in free hand with a roll of 3M tape. If we had simply free handed to entire thing instead of relying on the stencil kit, I would have saved time and money. The paint shop was supposed to paint the stripes and clear them in a single afternoon. But due to the time it took to lay out the stencils, diiscover the defect in the stencil kit, remove the stencils, and free hand everything, there was no time to do the painting and clearing before the end of the work day. So now my Camaro is in paint jail an extra day and will have to be painted and cleared tomorrow morning. I have also been reminded by the paint shop owner that they had budgetted a certain amount of paint booth time in my estimate, as they planned to have my car out of the booth tonight and another car scheduled for the booth tomorrow morning, that will now not be happening. I will have to compensate them for this additional timeas well as the additional time the paint shop spent correcting this mess with the stencils to begin with.
At this point, I am going to call Ralph and request an entire refund and will gladly send him back my unused stencils, along with photos of my issues encountered and my free handed striping, to show his kit was not used entirely. I hope they will make this right. I will report back and let you guys know the outcome.
