CRAAACK.
A few years ago, I repaired a trailer hitch hole in my rear skirt with a molded plug. It worked okay for a while, but cracked about a year later. It was just a hairline, but it grew. And it grew. And… well… you see. Removal made it 1000% worse, but still. It wasn’t doing Sharka’s ass any favors.
It also started to peel a bit.
Paint going away.
It’s not that obvious in this shot, but the paint on the driver’s side is… well… going away. Sorta dripping off. Like it’s melting. I have no idea why. This has been going on for about 6 months. Due to the skirt being so low, it’s hard to see, but if the light is juuuust right, it looks pretty bad.
Back when I painted my mirrors a few months ago, I also painted an extra rear skirt (thanks Planet Miata!) No painting pix. Sorry. It wasn’t glamorous. I just used some paintscratch rattle cans. Then I left the skirt in my loft to cure for a few months before I applied vinyl to it.
Can I get an Awwwwwwww?
It was a beautiful January day. We had a week of high 60s here in New Mexico. I took advantage and swapped out the skirt and applied the vinyl. It was pretty awesome. I didn’t expect to do that until April or May.
When I was about half way done, Harriet and Sarah came home. Harriet was SO happy to see Sharka up on jack stands and me working. She came and helped. And I have to say, she’s a wonderful garage companion. Extremely interested in everything and ready to pass wrenches and cold drinks.
I can’t pretend. The above photo is the whole reason for this blog post. And yes, she got her own creeper at the hardware store the next day.
New-to-me OEM rear skirt.
Perfect paint and no cracks. YAY!
The paint came out really well. No more drips makes me happy. And no more crack in the middle of the stripe is fantastic. It was a small repair, but well worth the effort.
And every time I see the shiny rear skirt, I get to think about working on Sharka with my little girl.
Awesome father daughter project. How’d you get the vinyl stripes to line up so well??
Overlap! Overlapping the vinyl makes it easy. I hung the skirt with a gap between and then cut the vinyl too long. I just overlapped the new vinyl on top of the old to line it up. Then I stuck it down. The last step was to slice it and tuck it under the top edge of the skirt.
At the end, I had my little helper to tighten up the skirt and get everything well mounted.
I have some questions for you please email me rhyanfarr@gmail.com….by the way…nice job on the repair love the car!
Fantastic!