Well, the roadster's flames are gone. . . sort of. I had Gilson Body & Paint in Reno take it down to bare aluminum---you knew the hood was aluminum, right?!---and start over. Now it's ghost flames over Motorsport stripes. . . . I think I'll take the car to Monterey for the Central Cal Chapter's West Coast Concours. Display only: I ain't buyin' no Q-Tips. Then I guess I'll have to go find another Waffle House.
TIme to figure out how to upload a photo, I guess. . . Well, SURELY you didn't think I would LEAVE the flames off, now, did you?! View attachment 1808 Actually, this image shows the car with "ghost" flames across Motorsport stripes before we took it all back off AGAIN and re-did it. . . . Now the flames are so subtle you have to squint to see them in the proper light. . . so I may eventually do something completely different. . . or not. As for the "old-school" nature of flames. . . that's the point. You whippersnappers don't remember when Von Dutch shocked two worlds---the hot-rod crowd and the sports-car weenies---by showing up at the Oakland Roadster Show (I think) with a 300SL Gullwing. . . with flames. But I do! Purists faint when they see the Lyle Fisk striping on the rear, too. Heh, heh, heh. View attachment 1809
Flames are cool! You know what else is cool is fire paint jobs. I don't know who he is, I think his name is Mike something. I saw him doing a couple of cars on TV once. It looks like real fire. He did it on a black background car and it was awesome.
Yes, actually I did. You disappoint me, Satch... Don't you worry your little flames, a heart attack is ensuing!
AARP card, I remember when the big thing was hand-painted pin striping and scalloping on 1957 Chevys.
Badges? We don't need no. . . Heh. There is at least one other thread around here that discusses the removal and addition of M badges. . . .
And ///M badges! And the only reason I can think of to remove it would be to clean it really, really good.
As long as it's not a "Type R" or "NOS" sticker/badge. Regardless of how many horsepowers you get by applying one...
Dunno, performance > cosmetics in my book, and if stickers that say NOS, VTEC, or TypeR help my car go faster, then I'm inclined to install them...
Badges versus no badges Yeah, those M badges definitely make 12% more horsepower; I noticed it right away when I pried the damn things off. Let's see, there was one on each front fender and one on the back, so that's 36% horsepower I threw away! No wonder I can't outrun that #$$%@! 335i! I guess to get in the proper spirit by putting those infernal slash marks before the M: you know, like ///M. I get so much mail with this lunatic affectation that I have had to write a simple macro to purge the document of such nonsense. Hmmm: ///M
