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| Black & Blue Emblems |
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So, I've been getting ansy while awaiting the arrival of the clutch and flywheel, so I decided to try and make myself some black emblems. Now, one might ask, "But The Rob, can't you just go and BUY black emblems?" To answer your question, I would, of course, slap your bitch ass for being an uppity fuck and asking so many questions. Then I would tell you, "Look, jackass. If I wanted to go buy them, I would go buy them. Making them is way cooler, so fuck you." Plus, it turned out way sweeter anyway, so it's all good. Anyway, to get to the story...this is what a stock red emblem looks like. You probably have three of them on your own car. There's one in the front, and one above and slightly behind each from wheel, embedded in the body panels.
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To remove the emblems, you'll need something to pry out those push-pin rivets that hold some body parts together, as well as a 10mm wrench. To get the the emblem in the front, open the hood and look right above the emblem, where the body panel it is held into connects to the front of the frame. There are three push pins there that hold the body panel on. Pry the top part out of the bottom part and then pull the bottom part out, as well. Once the three pins are out, you can pull the body panel back (gotta love plastic, baby) to reveal what you see in the picture to the right. The emblem is held on by a nut-like thing that you can get off like a regular nut using a 10mm wrench. To get to the side emblems, remove enough push pins from each fender well splash guard so that you can fit your hand up there almost to the elbow. Then, using the wrench, unscrew the nut holding each emblem and pull them off. If you break the plastic rod on the back of the emblem, then fuck it. Just superglue the fucking things back on later. Whatever.
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Now that you have your pretty emblems off the car, clean them with some water to get all the shit off them before you start coloring anything. Now, using a permanent black marker, like a Sharpie or something, color in the red parts of the emblems. Try and stay within the red as much as possible, but it's not a big deal. When you've colored all the red, you now have to go back and correct your mistakes. Any place you accidentally got black ink on the "chrome" part of the emblems, scrape the black off with a fingernail. If it doesn't come off easily, lick the tip of your fingernail and try again. The black ink comes off the chrome plastic MUCH easier than it comes off the red plastic, so you can use that to your advantage. If the red comes peeking back through, just color over it again and clean it up the best you can. The picture you see here shows the kinds of mistakes I made during the coloring. I suck at coloring and painting and shit. Anyway, the point is that you CAN fix these types of errors, so don't worry about it.
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Once you have the emblems nice and colored black with all the corner sharp and shit, let the ink dry for a few minutes and then go outside to spray it with the enamel coating. The first time I tried this, I used an enamel clear coat. However, what I realized afterwards was that because both the ink and the enamel are organic, they solvate each other, causing the black ink to run blue. So, what I decided to do was use a transparent blue enamel spray to match the ink runs. I bought some Testors Transparent Blue Enamel #1257. It worked very well. The best way to apply it is to use many thin coats, to prevent running as much as possible. Use a thin coat on the first layer, at least. After you let that harden for an hour or so, you can apply more coats until you like the color it provides. I have a purple car, so I wanted mine to be quite dark. It turned out well. The blue is very dark, and the "black" is a super dark purple color. By the way, the thicker the coat you have, the more bubbles and shit you're likely to see when you spray the paint. To help get them out, put them under a hot ass lamp, as shown to the right. It can really save your ass. If you REALLY fuck something up, any organic solvent will dissolve the enamel and ink, giving you a clean slate on which to start over. I used throttle body cleaner, but I don't see why brake cleaner and the like shouldn't work as well.
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Here, you can see the finished color on the left, as well as the color provided by two coats of the transparent blue on the right. The first coat you put down will leave a pretty mild, bright blue, so if you like that, you can just leave it there, but I wanted it darker, as I explained earlier. Here is a shot of the finished product with a light shined on it. It should look like this on a sunny day, I believe. Not bad, eh? Anyway, after you're done, let them dry for at least a day or so, and then just rebolt then to the car, or superglue them if you fucked up the poles like me. Have fun, kiddies. Oh yeah, for those of you with different colored cars, I don't see why this plan shouldn't work for a red on pink color scheme, as well as possibly an orange on yellow, brownish on green, and dark purple on light purple, among others. You just have to match the color of the spray enamel pretty close to the color that the pen runs when in a clear coat of enamel. That's the key to getting a good looking product out of this project. Hit me up if you have any questions or concerns, as always...bitches.
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An addition: Finally got them on the car today. To the right, you can see the view from the front, and here is the side view. I would suggest, for those of you with purple cars, to use a purple marker and transparent purple paint, to match the car's color better, and those of you with blue or black cars to use the color scheme I have. Oh, the price of innovation is high. Whatever, it definitely looks..."unique"...so fuck you bitches.
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