[eddy481]

Background

My Duke is a April,2016 model and it is my first bike. So it was middle of July when the honeymoon period demanded some gift for my baby. That gift should be something which would make an ordinary duke, my own. I believe buying a bike and using it is one thing, while making it your own is another. Since it was my first bike, I did not want to tweak with the stock working of the bike, i.e, the exhaust, the lighting, the filters, the ECU etc. So I decided to give it a cosmetic makeover.

I went to the local KTM dealer and he showed me a couple of official decals from KTM. I did not like the design as much. Moreover they costed a bomb, INR 6000+. Another option which I had was to go with various decals available online, which costed a reasonable INR 3-4k. But then I did not know about the quality, could be great, could be horrible. So I went online and searched for all the car wrapping dealers available in the area, i.e, in and around Delhi(I am from Karnal, about 125 kms from Delhi).

After a bit of research, I found about 3-4 such dealers and then messaged them on Facebook about the requirements and the cost of the wrap. Out of these, only the above mentioned replied positively and gave me an estimate of about 6000-9000 bucks. It was a bit high, but then again, it gave me the opportunity of making every bit of my baby as my own. So I fixed a date and went to their office in Gurgaon. Since it was about 160km from my place, I could only make a short visit, but the visit was fruitful. My main requirements were a combination of black, red and white colors, with the former being the background and the latter two being accents.The email ID was exchanged and an advanced fee of INR1000 was deposited.Moreover, the total estimate came out to be INR7000. Do note, it was August of 2016, i.e., before demonetization, but still the only mode of payment available was cash. Their office and garage can be easily found out using google Maps.

About 2-3 days later, as promised by them, a proposed design was mailed to me.


After some suggestions and some exchange of mails, the design was finalized as following:


The D Day.

A date was finalized. I took the bike to their garage on a thursday evening, about 4:30pm. They were kind enough to drop me to my sister's place about 5-6 kms from there. I was due to pick my bike up on the next evening.
So the time finally came. When I arrived, they were clicking pictures of the bike and it looked gorgeous and exactly as I hoped it would look like.

The images of that photoshoot can be found on their blog:
https://ideautoworks.blogspot.in/201...bike-wrap.html
Do note that the front fender, the alloys from the right and the lower half of the body except the engine cover at the bottom were not wrapped. Also the wp stickers on the front shockers and the tank lid sticker were present prior to wrapping.
Now, I had to travel about 160kms the same evening. They were a bit reluctant to allow me to travel the same day, but since I could not stay, they warned not to allow bike to get wet in any way. Also, they advised to keep the bike in the sun for the following week or so and wash it normally thereafter. The remaining amount of INR6000 was paid and happily I started the journey back home.


The week that followed.

The very next morning, I woke up to my worst nightmare. There were bubbles and finishing issues all over the bike. Most of these were not visible easily and could be ignored. But the worst one was this:


Notice the big bubble near the petrol tank cap.
The other problem was with the handguards with both looking like this:


They had warned that the installation on the handguards is the toughest and their glue would not stick to the paint. But this was something which I had not expected.

I mailed them the problem with these pictures and they were kind enough to acknowledge the problem and asked me to visit their garage for the rectification of these issues. But since I could not manage to visit them, I went in for some DIY, and somehow managed to glue the tank cap area bubble. The handguards, I just let them be.


The months that followed

The people in my area do not know much about Duke anyway,so for them this was what the company offered from the factory, but for others, they fell in love with the new look.

Since the accents were in general way too sharp and had too many small individual pieces, I decided to always wash the bike myself and clean it very carefully each time.


Today, after about 7 months and about 10000kms.

The wrap has stayed on very well. Yes, it has come at the cost of time and effort it took to maintain it very carefully, but still the color on the whole has not faded and most of the areas are still intact. A few more areas have had a bit of peeling, but still, the wrap has mostly maintained the look from it's first day.

The following are the present day images:
]
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The result of the DIY:

Notice the very faint wrinkling of the area where the bubble existed.


The KTM logo on the tank(notice the k of the KTM peeling off)


The M on the other side:


The ugly handguards as of today:


The inner view of the handguards:


The headlight(notice the stretch marks near the rubber screws):


The peeling on both the wheels:




Conclusion
If money is not the problem, and customer service with decent work is all you want, then this is the place for you. For the money you pay, the quality could be better. The wrap is not perfect but is still better than what most could have delivered.

Rating
****/5

P.S. This is my first review on this community. Kindly bear all the mistakes that my inexperience fails to rectify. Also pictures are taken from my phone, so kindly bear the poor quality. The review is based on my sole experience of the place and may differ from person to person.

[GTO]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Motorcycle Section. Thanks for sharing!

[vikrantj]

I am sorry to say but the work done (or whatever is seen in the pictures) does not deserve a 4 star. It is downright shoddy. If we are paying 6000Rs and getting bubbles and peel-offs on the very next day then I believe the work is not worth the money spent. If I were you I would not recommend this place to anybody

[v12]

That's precisely the reason why I dislike (or rather hate) wrap jobs. No matter how good they are...In the end it's just like a sticker and will peel off. Factory stickers will stick for a long time. Have seen wrap jobs on high end cars and supercars also ... But they all tend to peel off around the corners and that looks very very shoddy.

I guess for the money you paid - you could have got the OE type stickers from wrapandride.com. They have a good collection and the stickers look very much OE.

Here are some of their designs :

[eddy481]

Originally Posted by vikrantj

I am sorry to say but the work done (or whatever is seen in the pictures) does not deserve a 4 star. It is downright shoddy. If we are paying 6000Rs and getting bubbles and peel-offs on the very next day then I believe the work is not worth the money spent. If I were you I would not recommend this place to anybody

If I would have written the review in the week after the wrap, I wouldn't have given even a 3 star rating. But the fact that it has stayed as is after 7 months in which it has seen temperatures right from 40-45 degrees of the summer to 2-4 degrees of the winter has added a star to the review.

Originally Posted by v12

That's precisely the reason why I dislike (or rather hate) wrap jobs. No matter how good they are...In the end it's just like a sticker and will peel off. Factory stickers will stick for a long time. Have seen wrap jobs on high end cars and supercars also ... But they all tend to peel off around the corners and that looks very very shoddy.

I guess for the money you paid - you could have got the OE type stickers from wrapandride.com. They have a good collection and the stickers look very much OE.

Here are some of their designs :

I had these in mind before the wrap, but a friend of mine suggested against it citing quality issues. Probably it was worth the gamble, but I'm happy about the wrap anyway, albeit after paying a couple extra thousands.