How hard can it be to put stickers on a Wheel?...It turns out pretty F'ing Hard!!!

Two of my new toys for the 2012 race season are a Zipp 808 Firecrest Front Wheel and a Zipp 900 Disc rear.  When I got the wheels they had the traditional white Zipp Decals.  Zipp has since come out with a blacked out decal colorway they call "beyond black".  Wanting to have my bike look a bit more aggressive on race day, I ordered a set of beyond black decals and figured I would simply swap out the decals.  I mean how hard could it be to put stickers on a wheel?

Well if you are to believe this Zipp instructional video, it takes approximately 27 seconds to throw those new decals on.....

It's that easy right?  Not so much.  This ended up being a really big pain in the ass of a project which ended up taking me a period of several weeks to switch out the decals.  I would pull one off, replace it with the new one, screw it up...rinse, lather, repeat.  By the time I would get one decal on right I would be so annoyed that I would put the wheels away for a few days before starting to work on them again.  For those of you thinking about switching up your decals make sure that you order plenty of extras.  The decals are thin and tear very easily.  I didn't order enough and had to wait a week for another set to come in after I tore too many.

The original decals aren't too difficult to get off.  I used a hair dryer to heat up the glue and they peeled off fairly easily.  A little bit of acetone helps to take off the residual glue and allows you to work with a clean surface.  After much trial and error, I found the best way to apply the new decals is to start by cutting closely around the decals while they are still affixed to the backing.  I then cut the backing off only the first half of the "Z"and applied it on the wheel.  I found that I could then roll the backing off about 1/2 inch at a time and closely control where the decal was applied and avoid any air bubbles.  This method also allowed me to back track when the decal was going on crooked (which happened about 50% of the time).  You have to be careful when removing the backing because the decals tear very easily.  Using this process I was able to painstakingly apply all the decals.  They ended up looking great but this is not quite the simple project that Zipp would have you believe.

Final Results