I bought my base MCS with the expectation of making small, incremental mods to this car, making for a fun project for me (mostly) and my young son (not so much). During the week I made a visit to Prestige and grabbed OEM stripes, splashguards and a couple of plate frames. Saturday morning we (I) set out to knock all this stuff out before the predicted rain came in.

I went to my toolbox to fetch my beloved decal tool that I've had for about 25 years. It's a ski wax scraper that was about 3-4 inches wide and just the right amoumt of flex. A good tool for the job and the key to doing the job, right? Right. The tool is history; nowhere to be found. "Crap!" , I say. Saturday morning isn't even started and I'm already stopped. "Murphy", I guess.

What to use? I cover the garage, shed and utility room for something, anything that I can use to get this going.....nothing. Grab the kid; off to town. I make a bee-line for H&H Auto Parts and find nothing better than a Bondo scraper. Not bad; could work, but not optimal. Buy it anyway. We leave. Mr. "I'm hungry and I'll make your life miserable if we don't stop
at Dunkin Donuts and get something" starts to inflict his pain upon me and we pull into the DD and I spot the hardware store right next to it. A quick visit after the offspring pacification and I find this:



It's a bit wide (6") so I notched it back to 4". Let's get this going on:

The subject after a quick prep with dish detergent and water.



Start the layout process with mask tape, a tape measure and lots of trips back to look from a distance. My neighbors are gawking by now. Find the sweet spot and lock it down. I marked my points with erasable magic marker after final layout in case something went horribly wrong like an unscheduled thunderstorm or unscheduled child meltdown.



After about 15 minutes I had a good layout. Tape it down and mark it off.



Now the fun part....I've always done the more broad decals with soap/water spray and had good success. I decide to lay these on dry. It went pretty well. Here's the result along side the un-striped original.




I have a couple of tiny bubbles that might need escape, but I'm giving them a few days in the sun before I make that decision. Another shot after I a dose of some Slick:




I think the results are good, and may possibly make me begin to lust for boot stripes to match. I have time to think. Waddya think?

 

LOOKS SWEET!!!
Was it Murphy's Law??

 

Dry?

Gutsy, but if you have (had, sorry) your favorite decal tool, you've done this before. Nice job...looks just like DVL, but newer of course--and very shiny...congrats!

 

Thanks, I've done a few over the years. The last car I decaled was my brother-in-laws `71 Dodge Charger R/T restoration a two years ago. Without doubt, the hardest decal job I've done. The side reproduction stripes were horrible quality and tough to work with. The hood and Air Grabber stripes were 14" wide in some places. Layout was tedious and the job took two days and some shattered nerves. I did do that job wet, though. It wouldn't surprise me if that's where my applicator got lost.

This one was easy by comparison.

 

It looks great!! Don't be suprised if other MINI owners start showing up at your door with bonnet stripes in their hands.



06MCS/DS/B/Bbonnetstripes/Whalen8ballshiftmachine

 

Wicked Cool

 

Nice job, stripes make all the difference on the MINI IMO