Has anyone tried the soapy water technique with kart stickers?
I can’t see why it wouldn’t work but I don’t really want to risk a sticker kit to find out.
1 Like
I haven’t myself but I’ve seen people do it.
Never tried with kart stickers but always use it with airplane stickers. It’s not just soapy water, you need about 20% alcohol for the best results.
Disclosure: I hate fitting sticker kits on karts, I never feel like they look good when done and have too many bubbles, stretches, or issues. It’s very likely I just suck at it
That being said I’ve adopted a bit of a hybrid approach where I VERY lightly mist both the back of the sticker and the plastic. I’m saying I hold the spray bottle far away for very little coverage. I’m using only water for this. What I find is that it’s not like a full wet application where I’m having to squeegee out excess water, but it does give more leeway if I need to pull and reposition the sticker than a full dry application. You’ll still want a hairdryer or heat gun though to help with adhesion and you’ll still need the squeegee to help with air bubbles. Try on a sidepods first to see if you like it as those are generally the easiest to fit
I went this route as the first time doing full dry I had to peel and reposition a sticker and I could never get it to stick right. Always seemed to want to come up at the edges. Of course right now my gastank sticker on my kart is doing the same for me with my method so who knows maybe it’s just me.
I have used the soapy water method on cars with good success, but when I tried it on a kart I found it not very affective. When using soapy water, the stickers tend to slide around a bit. On a car, not so much a big deal, but on a kart with all the compound curves it gets a little frustrating when you are trying to follow a curve that requires you to stretch the sticker in order to get the lines to match up. I often found that the sticker would shift out of position in these cases. My best result was just to use a heat gun and take my time. You can always use a needle to poke a hole in any air bubbles to release the air and flatten out the lumps.
We do not reccomend this method at all.
Not sure why Holeshot would either.
The KTM 50 those decals are being fitted to are not complex curves.
The adhesive needs to bond to the plastics and when you are sticking to curves this does not happen because the solution is creating a barrier.
Fitting dry using our decals is absolutely fine.
The material can be removed if any mistakes are made and the vinyl / laminate combination can be manipulated when fitting.
1 Like
I agree. When fitting vinyl to a complex, compound surface any lubrication will make it difficult to contour the sticker to the curves. Best tool is a high quality heat gun and application tool i.e. something to push the bubbles out. Just take your time.
3 Likes