3M Reflective Air Bubbles

[captainron19]

First time I had this happen. Yesterday put some striping on a pickup truck. Did a 3" stripe basically around the entire perimeter of truck. Used 3M reflective scotchlite with a dry application of course. Installed the vinyl indoors which was a firehouse and it was a bit warm in there. Installation went fine and looked great when I left. Had one two small air bubbles not worth popping that I told them they would work out over time.

Today I got a call that the vinyl was completely bubbling up. Of course I went right over to location. It wasn't as bad as feared. But...There were a lot of air bubbles that appeared but the vinyl was all intact in still in place just fine. They informed me they moved the truck outside last night and left it out today. It is pretty warm (almost 90 and it was sitting in the sun).

Should I be concerned or will these bubbles most likely work their way out? Probably 95% of them are so small and numerous I wouldn't even consider popping them out. I know reflective material breathes less and it may take longer but just looking for any input as this is the first time I ever saw this happen.

 

[ikarasu]

Did the Truck recently get repaired / painted? We've had some newly painted vehicles do that because it didn't off gas at all.

 

[captainron19]

Did the Truck recently get repaired / painted? We've had some newly painted vehicles do that because it didn't off gas at all.

I considered it possibly from outgassing but it is brand new delivered from dealer about 3 weeks ago

 

[equippaint]

Humid air that didn't get squeegeed out good enough? Easy enough to do with a stripe. Trapped moisture in the air expanded a bit when they took it outside which made the bubbles

 

[Nick Nie]

I think it may come from the sunshine, the sunshine heat the vinyl and make it soft and generate lots of bubble. we met this kind of issue before, we apply two side of a vehicle, one side facing the sun had lots of bubble, but the other side was good. we testing it in house and find use heat gun too much can generate same issue.

 

[Chuck B]

I was doing police cars (in the winter) using 3M680 and had this exact same issue. The sun's exposure would cause the bubbles to form (keep in mind it was still cold outside). On cold damp days the bubbles would disappear, and then reappear on warmer days in direct sun. At first I thought it was lack of paint outgassing time, but eventually decided that there was an issue with the vinyl. I started heavily (with a capital H) prepping the surfaces with alcohol...which helped, but didn't completely resolve the issue. I reached out to you guys at Signs101 about this and contacted 3M about my concern as well. Intuitively, I suspect something changed over at 3M to make more $$$. It seems eventually the bubbles went away as I wasn't required to replace anything, but it freaked me out so bad that I switched to the 680CR...thinking the air release would help. The 680CR went down and stayed down as one would expect. Since then, I only use the CR---a little more expensive, but money well spent for a good night's sleep and peace of mind. The last thing any of us wants to do is remove and replace reflective vinyl.