I spent some time today assessing the paintwork I did earlier in the week using the blue Plasti Dip. I knew I needed to re-do large parts of the passenger side of the car, particular the door areas where there were large runs, but on closer inspection I reckon I need to apply at least another 2 - 3 coats on the drivers side, and as I need to start again on the passenger side, that’s another 5 - 6 coats at least.
Calculating the amount of Plasti Dip I need for this, it’s getting a bit silly given that this is an interim job until I get the car professional painted.
So I’m currently debating either leaving it as-is, taking all the Plasti Dip blue off (as I said on an earlier post the good news is that it does peel off the fibreglass as it’s supposed to do off normal paint) or attempting to recreate the same effect using vinyl.
Looking at the first option here, to be honest I can’t really bring myself to taking this out on the road given the state of the passenger side. So that really only leaves taking it back to white (but leaving all the decals/stickers on) or trying to recreate the same effect in vinyl.
The stripes and door areas are quite simple as I can get vinyl in 50mm and 100mm widths which makes the majority of the stripes pretty easy to deal with, and having spent a day masking the car up for paint, it’s not that much more effort to get a decent job using vinyl. The trouble areas are the ears next to the intercooler.
The other challenge is matching the colours, as I can’t find a supplier who can do same colour vinyl in 50mm, 100mm and standard 1520mm widths.
So this I’m currently leaning towards having a go with vinyl (which means pulling the Plasti Dip off first) but going with this colour scheme (which is still Ford Original from what I can remember).
....
Any thoughts and feedback from you all would be gratefully appreciated as they say!
I managed to spend a couple of hours at Rally Day at Castle Combe today, where there were no less than 3 original RS200s as well as the new Retro RS200 kit.
Seeing the exact same stripe colouring on a genuine car (C200 RAN) has swayed me into deciding I will be taking the Plasti Dip off and replacing it with vinyl. I also managed to speak to the owner of DMB graphics who had a trade stand at the show and he has also used vinyl stripes on his RS200 replica.
It’s going to take a couple of days to get the vinyl so I will press on with putting the door cards back in and sorting the interior out. I will post some updated pics once I’ve done the vinyl swap.
Too wet today to get the car out of the garage to give myself enough space to put the door cards in, so before pressing the button on buying the vinyl I thought I’d better be 100% certain on what it’s going to look like with a bit of Photoshop editing....
The light blue here is probably a bit lighter/vibrant than the colour I’ve decided on for that specific vinyl strip but should look ok. And I’ve had to go for gloss rather than matt vinyl as it’s proving difficult to find the two 50 and 100mm vinyl stripes in the right width in matt rather than gloss.
Thanks Nick - the gloss is certainly adding a contrast from the 100s of stickers/decals I’ve now got on the car :-)
I know what you mean about cutting the vinyl rather than sourcing the right width stripes. I did have a go using some spare black vinyl I had and I could probably manage the 100mm stripe but the 50mm one was too thin and kept moving about slightly as I cut it to the right width.
In the end I did find a UK based supplier of an Italian manufactured vinyl that could do the 50mm and 100mm stripes as well as standard 1.22/1.55m vinyl on a roll but unfortunately the stripes were a slightly different colour swatch/palette than the larger vinyl and I couldn’t get a close enough match on a dark blue.
All said I think I’m happy with what the effect should be using the three colours and having gone through the pain of masking it all up for when I made the Plasti Dip attempt, I feel more confident now that I can get a decent finish on the stripes using vinyl. There’s also a couple of tricks I picked up from the owner of DMB Graphics who used vinyl stripes on his about where to make some joins that shouldn’t show.
Will still leave the “ears” though which I know will be a pain particularly pulling the vinyl round the front aperture where the grilles are.
Hopefully the vinyl should be turning up tomorrow so I need to get on and pull the rest of the Plasti Dip off, marking up of course with masking first where the vinyl needs to go!
Quick question for folks following my thread here ... can anyone recommend a custom vinyl decal / sticker printing shop who are prepared to do low quantity runs?
I can get to any number of bulk order shops on eBay but so far struggling to get a response from the couple of suppliers I’ve used in the past.
I’ve managed to source high quality .tiff images of the last 3 decals I am missing - they go on the sills either side, and so far I’ve used some alternative ones on each side.
Each sticker/decal size isn’t that big - approx 245mm - 280mm wide by 130mm deep. The Speedline one ideally needs to be die cut but I could live with it on a white background.
I’d have a go myself with my home inkjet printer but past experience has been that they are never waterproof enough even after treating the waterproof vinyl after printing.
Thanks for the responses so far on the vinyl printers.
I’ve emailed Image Works and will give them a call this morning.
For £5.99 I will also give the eBay supplier a go - I wasn’t sure about print quality and how they would hold up so really helps to know someone has used them before.
A quick update on the couple of hours I managed to spend on the car this afternoon.
Unfortunately only the vinyl arrived for the stripes - the dark blue vinyl on a roll is now not due to arrive until tomorrow. That gave me more time to get all the Plasti Dip off, and even left some time to paint the inner edges of the headlamp cowls.
I’ve decided to not paint the inside edges of the lower air vents in the bumpers - it appears majority of original cars had these left white.
When the dark blue vinyl does arrive, I need to make a decision on what colour to use for the three smaller stripes. When ordering at the weekend I couldn’t decide between a dark grey and a silver based on the colour palette I was choosing from online. In the end I ordered both. Here they are with the wider 100mm sky blue vinyl against the intercooler intake on the rear clam, still with the Plasti Dip on. The vinyl for that area will be a much darker blue, hopefully close to the original Ford dark blue.
I need to wait until the dark blue vinyl arrives to decide, but I think I’m leaning towards the dark grey rather than the silver.
It looks brighter when you hold it up to the side of the car, and it’s also a lot glossier than the silver vinyl which is a bit more matte in appearance.
All that said, maybe if the dark blue really is a “dark blue” I will need the brighter contrast of the silver vs the dark grey. Decisions decisions :-)
IanA - that was a great recommendation on the eBay vinyl printing company. It turned out they were only 10 mins from where I live as well. I uploaded the images yesterday morning and today 14 stickers turned up for the pricely sum of £13.50 incl postage! They even had an offer on with discount for buying 3 lots.
Quality looks very good and they’re even ready cut (you can specify what shape/outline to have them cut on the vinyl).
Mid afternoon the remaining blue vinyl on the roll turned up and and it’s spot on in terms of the colour I was aiming for. I think I’ve decided on the dark grey for the thinner stripe but will apply the dark blue first to get a better idea.
I couldn’t resist having a go at a couple of easy parts just to see what the quality was like. It’s pretty good for the price but doesn’t have the air release channels you get on the expensive 3M stuff. So far it’s going on ok and I’ve accepted there will need to be some overlaps in less visible areas particularly around the ears next to the intercooler which will have to be a separate piece of vinyl.
I think for the larger areas like the roof panel and the door skins I will try wet application of the vinyl with a little spray of weak soap solution as it looks like it will be difficult to apply without air bubbles. That’s helped before but I need to test a sample of the vinyl to see how it reacts.
The Plasti Dip is still on the door panels as I decided to make the dark blue stripe wider than I’d originally done in paint and I still need to mask up where the large white square now needs to be cut out on the door.
Slow but steady progress yesterday applying the vinyl to the drivers side. Just about there now and will post some pics later today when I can get to the car.
Pleased with the outcome, and applying the larger dark blue pieces wet (very weak soapy water in a fine spray bottle) was much easier both in terms of being able to reposition the vinyl to get it lined up, and also getting rid of the larger air bubbles on application. Seems to be holding up OK and I even managed to fold the blue piece on the door skin in and out of the channel that runs along the middle of the car.
All the parts for the remote battery isolator switch also turned up yesterday. I managed to find a nice junction box rated at high enough Amps that I will use to extend the current negative wiring without having to cut that off and remake a lug/connection point. The isolator switch itself will be mounted on the rear crash bar low enough that I can reach it from the underside of the clam - should be a job for later today or the weekend. Here’s it prior to going on the car.
Here’s the pictures of the drivers side now fully striped up. Pretty pleased with it so far. I know the two “ears” either side of the clam roof will be a bugger to wrap but I’ve already decided where I will need to piece it, and the blue is pretty forgiving being dark in colour so join pieces don’t really show up unless you are very close up.
I also redid the sill stickers on the drivers side sill to include the new, closer to original versions of the 1986 car.
Will aim to do the roof panel on the top of the rear clam and hopefully both of the ears over the weekend, then I’ll plan to crack on with the passenger side next week. The one thing with wrapping using vinyl is you get much better and accurate at it the more you do :-)
Thanks Ned - in the end I got the guy at DMB Graphics to produce me a set as well as the ones I got via the eBay vinyl printer, so all sorted now.
Fantastic - many thanks again for the recommendation
Isn’t it funny how the parts of a job you think are going to be the hardest turn out to be relatively easy, and the easier parts turned out to be a right pain!
I made a start this morning on the drivers side ‘ear’ (scoop on the side of the clam). Given the complex curves I had decided to put a join running along the middle front to back as you look at it side on. I also put a couple of filler pieces in the front edge where the grille is fitted. Job done in about 30 mins when I thought it would take a couple of hours.
Then I decided I would do the flat roof area of the clam (between the two ears). It’s a flat surface with edges front and back where the vinyl needs folding over. My... I ended up spending 2 hours just trying to get the vinyl to sit smooth on the top surface. It’s clearly not a flat surface and even applying the vinyl wet and having assistance to hold the vinyl off the surface while smoothing out the air bubble it was proving impossible to get it flat.
In the end I resorted to a bit of low heat from the heat gun and had to stretch each corner slightly to get it flat. Unfortunately that meant when it came to folding the edges over on the front and rear air inlets to the clam the areas I stretched when cooling down crinkled a bit on the edges - not major and certainly not enough to warrant removing the vinyl and starting again.
So that’s just the passenger side ‘ear’ to do and the stripes and door piece to do on that side. I reckon a couple of afternoons and I will be there.
I also came across a couple of darker blue Ford badges which are a bit closer match to circa 1986 period so fitted those for a bit of a rest from wrapping :-)
Thanks for the feedback guys.
I’ve actually bought a 1986 reg (C plate) that’s on a retention certificate. I was going to wait until I’d MOT’d the car before transferring it but there’s really nothing I can see that prevents me putting it on now.
A couple of folks have seen the back of the car when the garage doors have been open with the 06 reg plate on it and said that’s the only give away for it being a replica. I know from the front you can tell it has an MR2 Roadster screen :-)
I think you’ve just spurred me on to do the reg change in the morning and get a set of plates made up - would you believe it the online service is only available 7am to 7pm!
I made a start on applying the vinyl to the passenger side today, and turned the car around after struggling to paint the Plasti Dip on the other side of the garage which has limited space.
Was nice to see the car turned around and have a different view from the garage doors :-)
Didn’t have that much time on the vinyl, but made a solid start and should hopefully have it finished if I can get another good afternoon in later in the week. I managed to finish the other “ear” yesterday as well.
All the old “wrong” stickers have come of the passenger sill and I’ll apply the correct ones once the vinyl is on. I should hopefully also get a couple of plates back in the post tomorrow for the C reg, and get them on before the next update.
Those following my build thread will remember a question from Nostromo on the flag just above the side repeater. I’m thinking of applying the drivers names from the no 6. 1986 car and spent a bit of time trying to source the font. Was impressed with an online AI driven font finder (you upload a couple of images of individual letters in the font you are looking for). Seems to be a close match and I’ve gone back to my favourite sticker/decal maker on eBay to get a couple of stickers printed and will let you know what they look like. You can see the masking tape in the picture above where I was working out the dimensions for the stickers. This is the font I managed to download.....
Probably helps if I show a pic of what I’m trying to recreate here from original car No. 6
Stickers arrived in the post today. Think the overall effect looks ok and is a close match to the original.
Issue is that the gel coat on the bonnet area/sides is probably the most yellowish in terms of shade of white hence the white gloss vinyl backed stickers with the driver / co driver name script stands out quite a lot against the panel.
I’ve found someone who can do the same size script in black die cut vinyl so there would be no gloss white background and they would be applied straight to the body work (eg like the Shell and Pirelli logos). For sake of £20 which is the cost of a pair of these I think I will go ahead and do the job properly.
The gloss white vinyl background on the sill stickers I had made up doesn’t seem to stand out at all so I guess the sills must be a brighter shade of gelcoat or you don’t notice it so much given they are lower down on the car, shadows etc ???
I managed to get most of the vinyl completed on the passenger side today. Those who’ve followed my thread since the beginning will be aware that the passenger side of the kit is often described as the “ugly sister” to the drivers side ... lets just say there are quite a few imperfections in the sills/door mouldings compared to the drivers side.
Anyway it meant that the measurements I’d used for the large blue vinyl wrap piece for the door on the drivers side were a bit out when it came to the passenger side. Luckily it needed to be slightly smaller to line up and get the angles right rather than bigger so no wasted vinyl in the end.
I also added back the correct sticker/decals for the sill on this side.
Looking back over the pictures I’d taken with the car outside, I realised earlier in the week that I’d not got the black Pirelli stickers on the rear bumper centred between the outer grilles - I think I’d centred them on the lights but on the original cars they seem to be centred against the lower grille. Pedantic I know, but I had a spare set so decided if a job is worth doing it’s worth doing properly.
New number plates fitted ... decided to stick these on rather than drill them. Will see how the pads hold up but may need to go back and drill them later ... you can just about see it in the pic above and the one below :-)
Will get the car out of the garage to have a closer inspect in the light tomorrow as there are a few rough edges I need to tidy up, particularly where the rear screen buts up to the blue vinyl, and the recesses for the door handles on each door.
I then need to get back to my remaining list of jobs as they sort of went on hold whilst I replaced the Plasti Dip with the vinyl. If I remember them it’s largely around fitting the mudflaps and sorting the interior out. I’m also thinking I should reinforce the door mirror mounts as there’s a bit of movement in them. I also want to run a black line along the centre indent in the panels - should have really done this before I applied the coloured vinyl but I’ll find a way of getting this fitted - going to try a 9mm vinyl strip first but may end up having to resort to paint.
Thanks molleur - looks lot better in the flesh than the Plasti Dip. Need to press on now to get it MOT’d as itching to get it out on the road
Largely a day of tidying up rough edges having applied the vinyl and stripes over the last week. This included a bit more patching under the door handles which blended in rather well (ps. The pic below was taken earlier in the day before I’d patched the drivers side door handle recess!)
The black vinyl 9mm stripe also arrived for applying to the centre crease/indent along the side of the car.
If I’m honest I’m not sure about this, particularly around the front bumper area. Original cars had it, including those in Rally liveries so I’ll leave it on for now and see if it grows on me. Would be interested in what folks think who have been following my thread.
I then indulged myself in applying the Ghia badges I’d bought way back even before the kit had arrived from Tribute. And yes the original cars had these, as a nod to the fact the Ghia design studio in Turin played a major role in styling the RS200.
Final task for today was to redo the matt black paint around the rear screen recess. The use of masking tape to apply the stripes had taken its toll on this. Once it’s dry tomorrow I will fit the battery isolator and then put the rear screen back in using the hex head DZus bolts I’ve bought to replace the D-ring fasteners I’d been using so far. Oh and I must make time to fit the mudflaps - they’ve been on the to do list for too long now :-)
