DIY Clear Tape and clear PVC film minor mods
 

For some things, all you need is some industrial strength clear tape, and possibly some thick PVC film. This will enable you to cover various aerodynamically ugly depressions or put boattails on appendages.

1. Clean the area well beforehand, as well as your hands, with methylated spirits and a clean rag. This will enable the tape to stick, and you not to leave grubby marks on the tape.

2. Cut out the clear PVC with box cutters (larger items, for smaller things tape can be sufficient. Fit it to the area you want, making sure that if you are making a boattail that it taper than no more than about 15 degrees away from the horizontal or vertical in the direction of the car's center.

3. Cut tape and apply as necessary. Try and hermetically seal the areas you are covering, this prevents dust/bugs/water getting in there, adverse pressure gradients, etc.

Here are the results on my car. All I want to do now is fix the windscreen wipers.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3...x768hs8.th.jpg

Somehow I missed this thread until just now. That's good work.

Suitably impressed, as usual.

In the top image, are we looking at a side marker light on the front fender (do you call fenders wings in Australia)?

Thanks!

First, fenders are fenders in Australia. Do you mean rear spoilers? Those can be wings.

And yes, that is a side indicator light. If you look at side on pictures of my car, you will see the light in question.

yeah, I love clear tape :thumbup:. I've been using heavy duty clear packing tape and coroplast since last winter with good results. It is surprising how long it holds.

I wasn't sure if you guys had escaped the British influence on car part names ... boot, bonnet, wings (front quarter panels), etc.

They're trunk, hood & fenders in Canada as well.

It's boot and bonnet here, too. But we have fenders as well.

I was thinking about that exact issue...aerodynamic turbulence caused by sidemarker lights. I like your solution, easy and inexpensive. The solution I was thinking of would be to eliminate the light cover that bulges out and instead have a flat piece of that transparent plastic attached to the outside of the car body, and the bulk of the light housing would be on the inside of the body.

What kind of tape did you use? If I had to guess I would say it's just clear plastic, packing tape from the pictures, but I just want to be sure before I use it on my car. My car has been in a few accidents by previous owners so there are large gaps that need to be sealed around the head lamps and near the rear fender. I just want to be sure that it will not pull paint or dissolve the clear coat on the paint before I do this because I know some kinds of tape have an acid in them that can damage things such as paper.

Much easier than mods I was dreading- sinking sidemarkers and fliing "canyon" with clear plastic, and having retracting wiper bases with removeable arms.

I have clear tape and clear Lexan pieces; thanks for the suggestion!

countersTrike

I did consider something like that, but
a) it looked like too much work, and
b) I want a turn signal visible from as many angles as possible, so I like that it stays sticking out.

Of course, you could do both, eliminate it and smooth over, then use the existing requirement of a mirror that sticks out by buying an aftermarket mirror/indicator combo. On second thought, that won't work if you remove your passenger side mirror, where it is legal to do so in a lot of places.

I suspect that by boattailing, you'd get 90% of the benefit of smoothing over anyway.

The tape is heavy duty construction type plastic tape from a hardware store.

I have not tried to remove the tape, so I don't know what the effects are. If you go ahead with it, assume the worst - that it will strip the paint. I don't know that, but that was my assumption going into it.

The whole reason I could do this was because I have a cheap car and I don't care about resale value. In fact, considering the fuel I'll be saving over driving a standard, unmodified car in a standard way, the payback period is 5 years. If fuel prices go higher in the next 5 years, obviously, the payback period will be shorter. e.g., if they double, it's 2.5 years. If they triple, it's 1.7 years.

Newtonsfirstlaw: thanks for the info. I will test a small corner of the car that is already in bad shape to see if it does any damage after leaving it there for a while before I continue further. I will let you know how it turns out.

My car was in a wreck before I bought it too. Many big gaps in the front so I've been using "duck" high performance packing tape for a year now without issue. It might leave goo behind but it comes off with wd-40 or "goo gone". It will pull paint that isn't sound underneath though.