Update 4/25/15: CF Vinyl Finishing Applied to Front-End Aero Pieces
I’m playing Mr. Mom this weekend, as the wife is away on a ladies retreat with her friends from church. In between “I miss mommy” exclamations, as well as a barrage of “Where is mommy?” and “When is mommy coming home?” inquiries, I did manage to get one important item done on the project this weekend.
The title of this post says it all. Here’s the progress pics.
....and “behind the fence at Disney World”
:
The wiper cowl, being the longest piece, proved to be the most difficult to wrap. I read a trick about spraying the piece to be wrapped and the underside of the vinyl with a soapy water mix prior to mating them. This, in combo with a heat gun to help seal the vinyl and dry the water layer in-between,
REALLY helped!
Since the back side of the wiper cowl is visible once installed, unlike the grille and fog blocks, I opted to trim a small 1/4” edge off the perimeter of the cowl, leaving the backside as plain black. I felt that trimming flat against the metal edge would, surely, have caused the vinyl to peel back over time. Coming in 1/4” from the edge assured I could press the material down securely. Also, I think/hope the satin black “stroke” surrounding the CF vinyl creates a unique look.
Thanks to my friend Victor (“vrmouseyd15b” from Ecomodder), I was able to crown the wiper cowl in
ROYAL fashion!
I also added some vinyl trim to the bottom side of the wiper cowl, tying it in to the look of the rear-end aero, and also preventing scratching to the hood surface.
...and voila. The complete front-end set, all ready to mount.
Not pictured here was hot-gluing the black gutter guard to the rear of the grille block. This was the exact same process I used for my first grille block, which can be found in
THIS POST.
To get all of these pieces installed, I will need to complete fabricating a set of re-vamped wiper cowl brackets (my last set wasn't clean enough), and then paint them as well as the grille block back-braces I built a couple of weeks back. Once that’s done, I can bolt them all up.
In eco-performance news, I attained 58.7 this past tank. From what i can tell so far, the new rear-end components appear to be netting (very roughly) a 3.5 mpg gain using 93 octane gas. Now, I’ve driven about 60 miles on a new tank of 89 grade E0 (ethanol free gas). So far, the gains are even larger with the ethanol-free gas. Appears about 5 miles per gallon.
I do plan to A-B-A test these mods in May, to confirm all of this, of course.
I’ll be back with more progress soon.
Until then, thank
YOU for ecoTuning in!