Day 7

The very first thing I attempted today was to put the smallest decal on the model. This is putting the Ford GT emblem on the center of the steering wheel (yes, I know it is not the correct emblem, but it is all I have). Even using tweezers, this decal was difficult to cut. Once cut, I tried to move it to where the bowl of water was, and along the way it fell to the floor. Uh oh! It took about 5 minutes to find, and looked just like a piece of dust! But, it was still in one piece and ready to go!

I took a tighter grip on the tweezers, made sure the decal was facing the right direction, dipped it in the water for about 5 seconds, moved the tweezers to another part and re-dripped it in the water. Then I removed the back of the decal and gently applied it to the steering wheel. I used the tweezers to move it into place, held my breath, and backed away. Whew! I don’t have the steadiest hands in the world, but it somehow found its way to the correct place without ripping!

With new found confidence, I approached the 2 decals for the steering wheel in the same way, but was a little bit disappointed. The decals are too small for the space, so I had to go back with the silver and black paint, and try to just very gently touch up the outside of the decal.

Finally, I went back and glued the steering wheel column to the lower part of the dashboard, careful to avoid the decals. And the dashboard is now finished!

The next step is to work on the interior. In addition to the dashboard and steering column, here are the pieces I am going to use:

The model did not include a shifter boot at the base of the shifter, so I got out the black paint and added it. Let's see... The parking brake on the model was chrome, but on the Ford GT, this is silver, with a little bit of black. Therefore, I changed the color of the parking brake to silver and black.

Also, the arm rest on the center console, as well as the floor mats should be black. I put tape around the each of these three parts and then painted them black. The floor mats turned out okay, but the arm rest leaked black and required a little bit of silver touch up.

Then I took the pedals and painted them silver. I also took the inside door panels and painted the handle and ring silver. I did not use tape for this, but was really careful. The section behind the seats was initially painted silver. After looking at pictures, I decided to repaint this black.

While I waited for these pieces to dry, I checked my mail and noticed that my speeding ticket found its way to me. For those of you planning on traveling through CA, I would drive watch my speed – tickets there are NOT cheap!!! :-(

The painting took a while, so I decided to move on. As far as the decals go, Ralphie has four number 2’s on his car. These appear to be in New Times Roman bold white font with red background.

I then noticed that Ralphie has a sticker from Dani’s memorial service on the clamshell window. Daniel was such a great friend that I want to make sure to get this sticker on there.

Next, I still needed to put a gold arrow on the front of the car pointing to the tow hook. I teased Ralphie about this arrow on numerous occasions, so I have to make sure it’s there. :-) I made the gold arrow using Power Point, saved it as an image, and then put a red background behind it (though I plan to cut out the arrow and just use that).

The left and right side stripe decals from the model are not made for the red GT. I could use a thin marker or paint, but because of the size, it would be nearly impossible to get the Ford GT part to turn out. Therefore, I decided to go onto the forum, pull up some side shots of the red GT, and make the side decals out of them. In case these did not work, I could always make a decal out of just the “Ford GT” part and use paint or marker for the red line in the stripes. To be prepared, I gathered pictures for each:

Through trial and error, I found the proper size for these decals to fit the model. I used IrfanView to resize them, and then I emailed these to the print store that I went to previously because I was very happy with their work. Unfortunately, they said it would take about a week to do since they were busy. With Christmas coming up, I don’t really want to wait a week. So, I went online and called a few other places. I found one with a pretty quick turnaround time and emailed him the pictures. He told me the resolution was low and the quality was very poor. I appreciate the fact that he gave advice rather than doing the work and charging me for poor quality decals! His recommendation was not to use the IrfanView program to resize them as it lowered the resolution, but to use MS Word instead. He also recommended higher resolution pictures for the side stripes.

So… I changed up all of the decals, except the side stripes. In order to improve these, I needed actual photographs – not Internet photos. I have a handful of friends with red GTs that I called, and I also went to the Forum and sent a few emails to red GT owners that are either friends or are people I’ve seen on the forum a bit.

I really did not expect anyone to respond. I know that most of the guys have their cars on lifts or put away for the winter. However, within one hour the responses I got were unbelievable!!! And they weren't just photos being emailed to me. Several people offered to take photos of their car and one gentleman actually went to his garage and took a number of detailed shots!!!!! (The quality was perfect, as was his beautiful car. Unfortunately, he has one of my favorite roundel decals covering part of the stripe, but I might still be able to use part of it.)

Thanks to these guys, we are on our way!!!