Wearymicrobe's 550 Spyder Build and SB100 Registration adventure.

Looks so correct on the vintage! I did the same thing, it was cheaper to buy a used cutter than have a couple stickers made....

I can make stickers and masks now. Taught myself inkscape and got the export functions working after messing around with drivers from 10 years ago. Its not that hard and I have zero idea why anybody would quote me what they did. I can now take stuff from the next and make outlines, then convert and print using the old HP printer languages. 

FYI this is some cheap as E36 M3 vinyl. I have some good stuff I can use for the masks later. I need a transfer roll and some more blue tape but yeah when I do this in paint and age it through its going to look really really good.  I had to do this with painters tape as the transfer. 

Let the painting commence. Tomorrow.

Almost done with the printing and going to start the transfer paper working in a few hours.

Outstanding!

Ok so this was not too hard to do but I need to do a better job masking out from the sticker got some over spray that I needed to remove after I did this.

The aging is going to be harder as I went heavy on the paint in the areas that I wanted to age so I can blend it out and it runs horribly over the vinyl and then down past the stencil. you can see the result at the very bottom of the square. That will be easy to clean up.

BBBBUUUUTTT and its a big round full bodied but it looks so freaking good in paint over the vinyl I tried.

So a little stuck. This is the factory roudel size according to some of the people I have talked with. It looks small to me? I could also do just door numbers in vinyl later as required. 
 

I am also 100% maxed on my vinyl cutter for width. 
 

In reply to wearymicrobe :

A little brake dust on those shiny rims and that will be damn near perfect...wow.

In reply to wearymicrobe :

If the black around the edges is gone it might look a little more proper. 

java230 said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

If the black around the edges is gone it might look a little more proper. 

That is just the mask I cut. It will be circular for sure. So I have been digging into the few books I have on the 550 spyder. There is everything from what looks like 14 inchers up to 20 inches centered on the door and many many pictures of what looks like GRM cars out of the track with what seriously looks like tape.

If you want to go bigger, just split the circle in your software and 2-piece it. If you are care full you can even create a specific overlap before cutting. 
 

I have no opinion on how the size looks, but the car looks amazing

I think the size looks just right. The car sure looks good with the vinyl. 

Jbugs can suck it. ~34 days of a part on backorder. Every week I call and its 4-5 days out. 

Called CB and they overnighting it along with some cool aluminum covers for the brakes to make them look like this. 

I can make big circles now by combining two cuts took a bit of work. Build a interlock on the cut but its much easier just to measure and tape when they are close. 

I am running out of white paint though so I am going to get the last two meatballs on the car and painted tonight if I can get some more.  

Your car looks amazing

Looks great!

Have you already done your aging on the logos or is that just the photo lighting?  What paint are you using for the logos?

• I make a mask on my vinyl cutter.
• Scuff area and clean with TSP. 
• Apply the mask to the car.  
• Paint
• Let it dry ~1 hour give or take depending on heat
• Then I contaminate the paint using a 3M red 600 grit pad with dust and dirt or to create SS look blue paint with aluminum ground dust. 
• Then I come in and clean up the inside of the logo with spirits. 
• I then brush down the edging with a 1200 grit grey 3M pad. 
• Then I clean with TSP on a green 3M pad ~100 grit and add the scratches and dents that way. 
• Then clean again with TSP 
• Then Clean. 

Repeat ad nauseam until you cannot stand being in the paint mask and stop for the day. There is no filter on these photos. 

Now I need to be very clear. I am doing this in a way to simulate age. IE I am even using different logos from different era's and aging them less and less as they get newer and newer. I even crackle painted then smoothed out the Pegasus to make it look like the oldest sponsor on the car. 

When the car is done it should look like it was owned by a private owner, who bought it left over form the factory in ~1958. Then raced the snot out of it till about 1985 or so when the values really picked up. Someone who did repairs over time to get back on the track. Who picked up sponsor stickers over time.

I am serious about the research and it sucks to do trust me. Finding photos of 550s on the track that were not factory cars and that got used in the 50's and 60's is hard. They are grainy and blowing them up and guessing how they would have done things is kind of the other side of this project. 

FYI almost down with all four meatballs. Then I need to finish on NGK sticker and the Fletcher aviation stuff and I am 99% doe other then some light aging work to the inside of the car. 

The car looks great. All that dedication and hard work has paid off.

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Whew!  Quite the process there.  Thanks for sharing that and your research and vision.

They mixed my clear coat wrong. The whole hood needs to be redone. 

berkeley

So the wife said just beat the snot out of the hood with cleaner and slap another sticker on. It worked. I also worked in the dirt on the gumballs (IE aluminum powder" got a bit more weathering worked in and cleaned up some under the car stuff I did not like. Its 101 here on the coast in San Diego and the garage is now too hot to even work in at 107. The cleaning of the hood with thinner did age the fletcher sponser paint I must say. 

I think I am done. Need to wait a few weeks so I can wax it but this is the unfiltered finished shots. Do need to pick a race number, NOT 55 or 56

In reply to wearymicrobe :

That's incredible!

wearymicrobe said:

So the wife said just beat the snot out of the hood with cleaner and slap another sticker on. It worked. I also worked in the dirt on the gumballs (IE aluminum powder" got a bit more weathering worked in and cleaned up some under the car stuff I did not like. Its 101 here on the coast in San Diego and the garage is now too hot to even work in at 107. The cleaning of the hood with thinner did age the fletcher sponser paint I must say. 

 

I think I am done. Need to wait a few weeks so I can wax it but this is the unfiltered finished shots. Do need to pick a race number, NOT 55 or 56

Looks amazing. 

For a number, the easy button is your birth year.

I like that idea. I liked it last night as well. But I picked the wife's birth year as she will be driving it as well. I was able to get the offical Porsche font pacakge and use that for the numbers. I have a friend who is going to send me some Rennsport reunion stickers as well for the rear of the car and Avon is going to throw in a few with my tires as well which will round it out completely. 

Dash is completely wired, engine is wired, sensors are wired, front and rear lights and turn signals are wired. Just not the power runs and the turn signal wires under the dash. 

So now I have like a Technicolor wire explosion in the rear and front of the car. Does anybody know of like a cloth wrap I can put around them that would like sufficiently vintage in construction. 

You can get non-adhesive cloth tape that's meant for wrapping electrical harnesses.