Another experiment I performed was about the exterior paint of the car. My Prius is dark gray so it is on the spectrum that absorbs most of the sun, having a scorching outside surface. It may not affect greatly the temperature inside the car but certainly increase the temperature of the air surrounding the car. I bought a thermal camera that is attached to an android cellphone (Seek) and that helped me understand better about the color of the cars and the temperature on them: it is incredible how the black cars can reach so high temperature compared with cars with white or light gray colors.
But also colors like red gets really hot. Well, painting my car to white is a very expensive option, so first I bought a couple of plastidip cans, and painted the hood on white, and then added some Jedi symbols on it with vinyl cut with my wife’s cricut. There was really a difference on the temperature of the hood compared with the surroundings. The downside of it was that the surface looks rough, I mean, I am not a professional painter and using a can to paint the hood is not as simple as you can think of.
I ripped the plastidip and paint it again with it trying to be more careful, but still I was not totally OK with the results. So I kept it that way until winter when there is no longer need to keep the surrounding of the car cool.
Before the next heat season, I brainstormed other ways to keep the outside of the car cool, and I hoped I could chrome my car. But thinking about the chroming process, it looked as an impossible idea. Then our friend Google images let me discover that you can actually chrome your car using vinyl! In fact, some guys chrome the complete car that way. But for my budget it would be too much money for my experiment. I calculate if I take it to a shop they will cost around 500 dollars to, so I looked on amazon and eBay and I could get the vinyl, on several colors also. I bought a 10 dollar sample, just enough to cover the “black” spoiler of my Prius.
I got the gold color because I thought it will combine with the silver/chrome if I decided to go this way. I discovered that applying the vinyl is not like covering the books when you were at school; it is a little bit trickier. But well, it was just the first trial and it looked good, the only back draws is that after a couple of months it started to discolored a little bit. But well, I bought the cheapest vinyl as possible, not the 3M that can last more. So with that practice I purchase now the chrome/silver vinyl and installed it on the top flat surfaces of the car which are the ones that gets most of the sun. I really liked the look, half up of the car was reflecting the sky, the blue with the clouds, and it looks really nice.
Measuring the temperature of the metal, it was a very big drop compared with the original dark gray areas.
Also measured the sun shade, and it was so much cooler.
They said that the cheaper is sometimes expensive; I installed them on April, and since July I started to see some degradation on the silver chrome: first on the sunroof it started with black dots that started to grow, then I tried to take off some portions of the frame of the window and it leaved shiny residues that will require me to use a heat gun to take them off. Then on the Hood I just started to see the black spots I originally saw on the moon roof. I will wait until fall or winter to take it off, hopefully without damaging the paint of my car. But I may consider buying this time the 3M vinyl, hopefully it is not that expensive as the $80 dollars that the cheap vinyl cost me.
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