Love the look! Anyway you could post a pic of it at night with the light bar lite up?I hade mine blacked out w/ wrap (I believe the Luxe mentioned here). I went to two wrap shops prior, they wanted $500 and $700 and told me it would have light gaps at the creases. I ended up getting a PPF at a more well known place and they did the light bar for $300 and it came out perfect. This is black during the day and at night the light will shine through.
This.
Any way to find out exactly what exact shade they used?I hade mine blacked out w/ wrap (I believe the Luxe mentioned here). I went to two wrap shops prior, they wanted $500 and $700 and told me it would have light gaps at the creases. I ended up getting a PPF at a more well known place and they did the light bar for $300 and it came out perfect. This is black during the day and at night the light will shine through.
I wanted to share my deep dive into something many of us seem to have an interest in... darkening the light bar in some way. As my truck is black, I wanted to go as dark as possible to blend it in with the rest of the vehicle. Certain colors look fine with lighter tints- notably white and grey. But I wanted to go as dark as I could, so I did my usual OCD thing and researched it way beyond what a normal person would've done. After talking to multiple shops, lots of forum reading, image searches and even a couple of chats with AI, I thought I'd help save someone else the days of time it took me to pull this all together.
Initially I learned there are several ways to go about this.
The first is a spray on product that basically paints the lightbar in a way that allows the light to shine through at night. Looks dark in the day, so that's a plus. But it's almost impossible to lay on paint so evenly that a light behind it will show thru in a perfectly even way. The result is, it looks ok from a distance at night, but the closer you get, you'll see some areas darker than others, and even some splotchy/spotty type areas. My plastidip/powder coat guy told me this today, despite it costing him the business- his honesty was appreciated. But this made it a no go for me.
I read about the Lamin-X pre-cut tint pieces and saw some pix and it looked like a convenient solution. I ordered the darkest tint they had, called gunsmoke, for both front and rear for about $200. After more digging, I noticed the trucks this product looked ok on were all pretty light colored, or they were using the grey as an accent color elsewhere on the truck- whereas I am trying to get rid of the grey parts (grill, wheels, etc). I also found lots of complaints online about the cuts not fully covering the lights, and being very difficult to self install (I plan on using a shop, but even then, I dont want them to do a bad job and say it's the cut of the product that's making it look bad). After a while I had a change of heart and decided to return them. This is when I was surprised by them first telling me that I could not return the rear light tint as it was not returnable. I argued the website didn't say that, and they agreed to accept that. I mailed them back to the podunk building they have in nowhere Georgia at my own expense- luckily I had a box I could use. Once returned, they they hit me with a $50 "restocking fee", despite the films not only being in their original cardboard canisters still unopened, but those canisters were still in the sealed plastic bags with the inserts that had the color and product description. I am certain they will just throw it on a shelf and resell it, but they screwed me on the $15 of postage and a $50 fee for basically doing nothing. I have since looked them up and they are just some fly-by-night outfit of just 9 people out in the boonies. I do NOT recommend anyone do business with them. There are far better options out there for less money.
If you truly don't care about the light bar showing at night, you can vinyl wrap it in a way that perfectly matches your truck color. No light will come through, but it's your headlights that illuminate whats ahead of you, not the light bar. So it functions more as a running light. I decided not to go this route, but one local wrap shop offered to do it very cheaply and when they put a piece of the film on the light bar for me to see, it perfectly matched the metallic black of my truck. So this is an option, but I wanted the lightbar to actually shine at night, so I went with option #4.
And that brings us to what I feel is the best option, going to a local tint or wrap shop and letting them wrap it in Luxe brand light film. Many of them will have it in stock already as it's the most popular and highest quality film out there for light wraps. They will have to cut a seam along the edges in some areas to make it work, so make sure you're choosing a shop with very high reviews- maybe even ask if they've done Lightnings before. Going this route ensures the entire light gets covered, as opposed to pre-cut stuff that often does not cover the whole light. Its also something the installers are extremely familiar with, so odds are you'll get a great final product.
I will add some pics here so you can see the differences. I looked hard to find a sprayed light shining at night. I would have sworn I'd seen someone post one somewhere that you could really see the splotchiness at night, but I looked for 20 minutes and gave up while trying to create this post. Maybe someone can find it and add in the replies.
There is one other option... You can order the film yourself rather than relying on just what the shop has on hand. This opens up a few other options from Luxe, including one that's honeycomb, one that's quite sparkly (called "Star Power), one that's flat instead of gloss (it's called Stealth), and even a carbon fiber looking one. They dont have examples on a Lightning Lightbar on the site, but I'll create an image that shows the pix they do have that illustrate the different styles.
Hope this helps explain the options as this seems to be a very popular mod to make. Just learn from my mistake and the mistake of others... avoid that Lamin-X crap. Do the spray on option only if you're ok with the spottiness at night. Or do the Luxe.
And no, I'm not affiliated with any shop or company or whatever... just an OCD analyst in his 4th week of Lightning ownership.
P.S. If any of the above pix are your vehicle/pix, I just grabbed what I could find with Google... not trying to steap your intellectual property, just trying to give visual examples. If ya want anything removed, let me know and I'll see if I can find a substitute.
This was a 3M wrap intended for tail lights. Sorry I do not know the exact color / shade. This work was done by auto image in New Brunswick nj. I specified that I wanted it to be matte and not glossy.
Thank God I did not follow through with this plan.This is a mock up I've been playing with this afternoon. Just kind of trying to visualize a few different approaches that are in my head. Again, yeah, sad that I put this much thought and analysis into things. Just how I am.
Obviously I aint using CADD or Photoshop 20 here. Just MS Office type basic stuff, but you can see the idea of it.
Do you mind sharing the link to the product you ordered on Amazon?I’ve been following a lot of the light bar options but didn’t want to drop a lot of $. So I found a precut option on Amazon for $30 and decided to dive in for a DIY. This was my first wrap attempt and for the money it’s worth a try. It’s by no means perfect but it will do.
Here you go: https://a.co/d/aGdFDIM
Looks very nice! Did you post pics of the rear light bar tinted or wrapped as you mentioned? Also wondering why you didn't black out the side yellow markers if you went for the full murdered out look?Thank God I did not follow through with this plan.
Instead I found some pix online where people painted the smooth part of the grille that surrounds the two textured areas. I asked AI for the closest 3M wrap that would match the agate black paint on my truck, and then found it for sale online. Once I knew what I wanted, I went to my local plastidip/wrap shop and showed the guy pix of what I had in mind. He was able to copy it flawlessly. I could not be happier with how it turned out.
On the lightbar itself, I found a Luxe product that was for tail lights. I had no plans to do my tail lights or rear brake bar. My veteran plate (once I can use it) has a lot of red on it from the flag stripes, and I honestly like the way the red contrasts against the black on the back of the truck. But, I somehow accidentally clicked on tail light films on their site and discovered Luxe makes an even darker film shade called Midnight. It's for tail lights, not for head lights. But hey, that lightbar is more like a daytime running light, right? Why not try it? I called the tint shop that's doing the work and the guy agreed that if I didn't think I was going to like the way the Dark Smoke tint looked in the sun, this was worth a try. Ordered the product and 3 days later I was in the tint shop. Made sure to take a pic outside to show it in a situation with decent light (tho it was slightly overcast). A lot of thoughts and ideas and research went into this, but as I said, I couldn't be happier!
The final touch was adding the black and grey decal over the blue and chrome oval. I couldn't have planned that any better. The grey just accidentally tied into the textured grey areas of the grille that I decided not to wrap. It definitely gives the front end a sort of murdered out look, but with some metallic flake in it too (yes, the 3M wrap is actually metallic). I also had the same Luxe tint put over the mirror lights and back up light areas (rear of cab, tail gate) that were white.
For those that are cost focused like me, I think I spent $100 or so on 3 yards of the Luxe Midnight Brake Light Tint. Ai says it only takes 2 yards, but order 3 yards to give your guy extra material in case he needs it- mine did. And the wrap film was 3M 2080 High Gloss Metallic Vinyl, and I want to say I spent around $150 as I again bought more than I need as I'd rather my installer have extra film than to run short. As it turns out, there's more than enough to do another grille this way. I originally estimated covering the entire grille, then took that amount and added 50% for contingency purposes. I think I might have used 30% of what I bought- so if someone wants to buy the remaining film for $75, let me know. I still have it in the cannister they sent me.
So, call it $250 in materials. $300 for the tint shop as these lightbars have a lot of tricky bends along the sides and gotta be seamed, plus it has to be tucked up under the hood where it's very difficult to reach. He spent about 3 hours on it. And then $200 for my wrap guy to do the grille, which took him a little over 2 hours. As I said tho... couldn't be more pleased.
I didnt do the rear lightbar as I like the red. My veteran license plate has red from the flag, so between that and the blue it all ties together well.
