www.integralingham.com/festripes

FE stripes

Younger members of our team suggested we add Final Edition stripes to our Evo1,

here's how we did it.....

Our Bobby's red Evo1 has been a good and faithful servant for several years. Bought from a gentleman on the Wirral peninsula, the car came with a good repaint and refinished gunmetal wheels. It has suffered all the usual faults, rust, fuel pump, window winders etc., but it's always been fast and happy to kick up some dust.

It's perky nature earned it the Red Rooster nickname.

As a reward, and for some summer fun, it was decided to fit a set of FE stripes to the car.

Although FE stripes are available from Projoe, we decided to create our own. A request on the Evocorner forum was answered by turnip888 with measurements of his FE stripes, yellow 25mm, blue 35mm, so we could build up the stripes from this.

Using Coreldraw on pc and our Roland printer, we sample printed colour panels to get the right shade of yellow and blue.

Colour management between devices is tricky, an actual printed sample you can see for yourself is the only safe way to proceed.

Red Rooster is a sunroof car, so our printed stripes only needed to be as long as the longest single rear roof panel, solid roof cars would need a longer stripe. We looked at a 'genuine' FE car once, in the South of England, with a join in the roof stripe, not good!

Colour samples and turnip's Evocorner picture

Stripes on screen, ready to cut

A feature of the FE livery is black bonnet vents.

I had a set of Evo bonnet vents from a fibreglass bonnet, I painted these satin black. So when we return the Evo to standard it's

original red vents will be refitted.

These used vents were white, originally red, and had been stickered up with Martini stripes. This had left a lot of glue on the vents, I cleaned this off with cellulose thinners, the only thing that'll shift the glue. The vents were then flatted down with P600 wet & dry,

used with plenty of water. Then washed off and dried.

A light dusting of spray can primer was then applied back and front, followed by a good coat of spray satin black

1 metre is a long enough stripe for our car, the roll of vinyl can be printed up to 720mm width, so we could fit 6 stripes on the vinyl roll.

With the colours decided the stripes were printed, the Roland, shown left, set at best quality print meant it was a slow print, but that was ok.

After printing, the material was clear laminated, this gives uv and scuff protection, and a hard wearing gloss finish. The stripes were then trimmed to remove the unwanted white edges.

Back at the garage, the original grilles were removed and the striping areas cleaned. Meths is best for cleaning, it removes the old polish residue, allowing the decals to stick soundly. When cleaned the bonnet width was measured to find the centre, then half the stripe's width measured outwards from the centre marks, this makes a point to butt the stripe up to. A strip of masking tape can be stretched between these marks to line the stripe up.

This is what a person needs to fit the stripes..

Hot air gun

Stripes

Methylated sprits

Fine spray with plain water

Squeegee

Tape measure

Chinagraph marking pencil

Single sided razor blade

Lint free cotton cloth

Clean hands are important, remove the backing paper and spray the glue side with plain water, position the stripe lightly, spray it again on the outside, lift one end and squeegee outwards from the centre.

Work into the corners, use a warm air gun to help do this. Then trim off the excess with your blade, check for bubbles, pierce these with a pin if required.

Repeat for the roof and rear spoiler, wrap around the spoiler and trim underneath. We did all this and the job was completed, the painted grilles could be fitted. I also had a FE radiator grille from a Japanese import car, this is now fitted to complete the FE look.

It may be heresy! but it does look good.

It's not going to fool anyone in the know, but we think it looks great.

It'll look good at the Ormskirk Motorfest!

This operation is on youtube here.