Not wanting to waste anything, and probably watching too much Blue Peter as a kid, I wondered what I could do with the bits of sticky backed plastic I had left over from the go faster stripes on Charmania. Looking at my blue CLX recently, as well as having white letters on the tyres, I'd been picturing it with the centre bar of the roof bars silver. So today I thought I'd have a go at the transformation.
Should be straightforward I thought, cut to length, measure the diameter with a piece of string to get the width. Stick the centre of the tape along the top of the bar, then smooth down the sides to meet at the bottom. Messed it right up! :bang:. The slight curve in the bar, plus the hot weather allowing the plastic to stretch meant I had creases in it and a very poor meeting of the edges at the bottom, so I ripped off the first attempt and decided to remove the bars and do the job indoors on the table.
This time I started with one edge stuck along the bottom, and then went all the way round till I got to the bottom again. I deliberately left a gap of about 3mm where the edges met as this looked tidier than trying to get them to meet perfectly, the thin black line this leaves cannot be seen anyway.
Now, the bars are held to the roof by a bolt at each foot that I thought screwed into threaded holes, wrong! As the bolt came free I heard a nut drop loose inside the roof, bugger. That now meant I had to remove the roof lining in order to hold them in place when refitting the bolts :bang:. This is a very delicate procedure if you don't want to do any damage, fortunately it went well, phew!
Anyway here's the outcome...........
Should be straightforward I thought, cut to length, measure the diameter with a piece of string to get the width. Stick the centre of the tape along the top of the bar, then smooth down the sides to meet at the bottom. Messed it right up! :bang:. The slight curve in the bar, plus the hot weather allowing the plastic to stretch meant I had creases in it and a very poor meeting of the edges at the bottom, so I ripped off the first attempt and decided to remove the bars and do the job indoors on the table.
This time I started with one edge stuck along the bottom, and then went all the way round till I got to the bottom again. I deliberately left a gap of about 3mm where the edges met as this looked tidier than trying to get them to meet perfectly, the thin black line this leaves cannot be seen anyway.
Now, the bars are held to the roof by a bolt at each foot that I thought screwed into threaded holes, wrong! As the bolt came free I heard a nut drop loose inside the roof, bugger. That now meant I had to remove the roof lining in order to hold them in place when refitting the bolts :bang:. This is a very delicate procedure if you don't want to do any damage, fortunately it went well, phew!
Anyway here's the outcome...........
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