Category Archive : Carbage run

Under cover Volvo

The last thing I wrote about the car is that the exterior was almost finished. Then COVID happened, the Carbage Run got postponed (twice) and the car sat under a cover for a little over two years.

Vinyl wrap discoloration
Vinyl wrap discoloration

We were a bit disappointed (to say the least) when we found what these two years did to the vinyl wrap, even though the car was under a cover for the entire time. The once orange vinyl faded to yellow-ish, like the orange juice at a cheap hotel’s breakfast buffet. Some parts came loose and it shrank.

We also had a flat tire. It seemed it had been flat for quite some time and it needed to be replaced. The battery was obviously dead, too. The headliner also came loose. It didn’t just sag a little, it was completely loose. So we ended up removing it from the car, glueing it back on and mounting it again.

When removing the cover, we found two kittens underneath. Probably somewhere between one and two weeks old. Their mother came to get one of them, but she left the other. We called in professional help and we hope to be able to adopt him/her in about two months.

Kittens
Kittens found under the car
Black spots

It has been quite a while since I last posted an update about our work on the Carbage run car. We did make quite some progress!

Vinyl wrap

We finished the orange vinyl wrap. Although it all looks peachy on the pictures, the wrap job didn’t go quite as planned. Partly because we never wrapped a car before, but also because the vinyl wrap I bought was really bad. When I ordered it, I didn’t feel like spending €600 on some decent vinyl (3M, Avery, VViViD) so I went for cheap no-name stuff that “only” cost me just under €200. That turned out to be a mistake. The foil can not stretch enough to wrap it around bumpers, it gets shiny very quickly if you apply heat (it basically melts), the adhesive is very bad (we had to redo some parts because the foil literally came off) and it discolored after sitting outside for just a couple of days. And it wasn’t even sunny. In retrospect, the €400 I saved wasn’t worth the extra work, frustration, and sub-optimal result. If I am ever going to wrap a car again, I will definitely go for one of the brands mentioned above.

Stickers

Stickers

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much luck with the stickers either. I wanted to have the name of the team on the car, the image of Fred and Wilma, Fred’s tie on the hood and the logos of our sponsors on the side. I had the stickers printed on transparent vinyl by some online print shop. They said they couldn’t print white, but since there wasn’t really any white in the design, I went ahead and placed the order. When the arrived it all looked fine. Until I removed the back sheet. I turned out that the colors they printed were not opaque, so effectively the stickers could only be used on a white background. What’s the use of transparent stickers if they can only be used on white? After complaining about it I got a refund and ordered the stickers elsewhere. When they arrived, the colors turned out to be wrong. I don’t know what happened, but it looked like the white they printed was blue. When I called them and send them an e-mail with a picture of the result they apologized and reprinted everything. The next day I finally had the stickers I wanted.

Rooftop tent

Rooftop tent

We wanted to have a rooftop tent on the car. During the Carbage run, we sleep at a different campsite every day and setting up and breaking down a regular tent every day is just too much hassle. A rooftop tent is ready to be slept in within 2 minutes. I checked Marktplaats (like the Dutch Craigslist) for a while. The rooftop tents on there were either too expensive, too far away or the seller was unresponsive (why place an ad if you are not going to respond?), but after a few months I found one that was exactly the type I wanted, it was not too expensive, not too far away and the seller responded quickly. I bought it the same day.

Black spots

Black spots

In the meantime, I ordered some vinyl wrap for the black spots. I choose the velvet option and that turned out very nice. It feels soft and it has a really deep matte black finish. I think it is the same stuff they use for airbeds. It feels the same anyway. Emmie started working on it. Getting the shape and size right is one thing. Distributing them evenly while avoiding the stickers and covering up the worst imperfections in the orange vinyl wrap all at the same time turned out to be quite a job. One she did very well!

Ever since we decided on the team name (Fred & Wilma) for the Carbage run, we have been thinking about how to make the Volvo look more like the Flintstone mobile. We thought about wrapping it in wood grain vinyl wrap, but we couldn’t quite figure out which part should be wrapped exactly and, equally important, what to do with the rest of the car. After some time we decided to wrap the entire car in orange vinyl wrap and make black stains on it (like Fred Flintstone’s outfit). And some printed stickers to pimp it up a little but more on that later.

We never wrapped a car before so we watched quite some YouTube howtos. We ordered some vinyl, a squeegee, borrowed a heat gun and started fiddling around with it. We probably made it more difficult by buying some (relatively) cheap no-name vinyl wrap rather than 3M, VViViD or Avery, but we can’t say for sure because we’ve never tried those.

A few weeks ago, I was browsing on one of those Chinese websites (I’m not mentioning names) when I came across some parking sensors. A set of 4 sensors, controller, display unit and a hole saw to make the necessary holes in the rear bumper would set me back only €15. The ’99 Volvo I bought for the Carbage run didn’t have any parking sensors and I was curious about this set, so I decided to order it.

A few weeks later, the package arrived and I installed it. The hardest part was to find a suitable route for the sensor cables. The rear bumper is filled with this foamy material, which makes it hard to get the cables through. Once that was done, I hooked up the controller to the reverse light wires. In that way, the sensors are only active when the car is in reverse. I put the display unit on the dash (I have yet to find a suitable place for it) and that was basically it. It just worked. So this is going to be a short post about €15 well spent 🙂

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