Reconditioning Emblems And Badges

[Davy]

Hi Guys,

The badges of my car had to be removed prior to a paint job and now it’s time to put them back on because the paint job is complete. The badges cannot simply go on the car as they are, because the remaining parts of the double sided tape are still on the reverse side of the badges. That has to be be taken out and new tape has to be pasted so that they firmly hold on to the body without falling off.

I thought of writing a DIY with the intention of helping someone who might want to do this at home without visiting Darley Road.

What you need:

3M double sided tape | a sharp blade | 150 grit sandpaper | 3M rubbing compound (optional) | Cotton rags | A flat surface to work on

A bit of advice on handling the badges first:
- Be VERY gentle on them. The last thing you want to do is snap one in half or crack them. Except for the common models, these badges can be hard to find. I had to buy the GLX badge that you see in the images below, from eBay after sweeping Panchikawatta for one and failing.

- Secondly, be cautious when working with the blade. If you’re not sure that you’ll cut into your fingers, wear a pair of gloves.

- Finally, put an old cardboard or some sheets of newspaper over the work table to avoid cutting into the table with the blade.

Let’s begin…

1. The first step is to clean the badge. Use the blade to remove the remaining glue or double sided tape. You can rip the double sided tape remainings with your fingers as well. After most of the stuff has been removed, it will look like this:


2. Before pasting the new double sided tape, the surface needs to be smooth, so we’re going to use the 150 grit sand paper to smoothen the surface out. I’m going to do the entire process for the letter “R” in my LANCER badge from this point onward and it’s pretty much the same for the rest as well.


Keep the badge on the flat surface and start sanding until the last bits of glue disappear and until the surface is nice and smooth.


3. The double sided tape can now be pasted on the badges. The tape I had was not wide enough to cover the entire height of the badge, so I had to paste two stripes. I recommend having a wider tape so that the job is much easier.

Paste the double sided tape carefully. Make sure you cover the entire reverse side of the badge. If you decide to rivet the badge later, having covered the entire badge will prevent water from reaching the rivet hole, thus corroding the body/trunk lid.


Cut the excess parts of the tape with the blade making sure you don’t scratch the front side of the badge.

For letters with an enclosed area in the middle (i.e.: A, B, D, O, P, Q and R), turn the badge over and cut the opening from the reverse side. This is one of the tricky parts of the process and requires a steady hand.


Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the remaining letters of the badge and we’re done. Following is the Mitsubishi three diamond logo that I did with just a few cuts on the tape.


4. Use the plastic rubbing compound and polish the chrome parts of the badge to give them a shine and to remove dirt stuck in the hard to reach areas.



That’s about it, now the badges are ready to go on the car. I’ll be pasting the badges on the car within a couple of days, so stay tuned for more posts. Your comments are welcome as always.

EDIT: Updated image URLs

Edited July 24, 2017 by Davy
Fixed broken image links

[Davy]

A little tip: Badges you buy from the shops or off the web may not always have the correct adhesive on the reverse side and may fall off. I lost a Ralli Art badge because it had a bad tape on the reverse side. And this GLX badge I bought off eBay, you can see from the photo below how thin the adhesive is. The stickiness of the tape is also not that great, so I’m going to cover this with the 3M tape as well.



You might think that this is not important if you're planning on riveting the badge, even so, a weak adhesive layer may lead the rivet hole to corrode since it doesn't properly seal the gap between the badge and the vehicle body (as mentioned in the original post).

Edit: Updated image URLs

Edited December 18, 2015 by Davy

[bogzy]

Great work as always machang !

[Sampath Gunasekera]

Great work Davy.

From where did you get that instruction manual appear in back ground of the photos?

[terrabytetango]

Dude, where did you find the 3M sticky stuff from? I've never been able to locate it here in SL, had to get it down through ebay.

[trinity]

Hey Machan,,,

Nice work bro.. Thank you for taking time to share your knowledge with us machan,,, i'm sure this will definitely help when i'm going to fix my lost badge someday.. Awaiting to see them on your trunk lid soon...

Cheers..

[trinity]

Hey did you printed the whole damn manual machan??????

[thou1584]

Hey Davy your work is great & useful too!!! How come the badge in the first photo has no joints between the letters in "LANCER" & the pics after has the badge letters joined?

[H.C]

Great work mate!

@tera, I found a 3m double sided tape from my local paint shop at Horana.(Honestly i was bit suprised to see one there ).

[maheshw]

good work bro...

[Davy]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Great work Davy.

From where did you get that instruction manual appear in back ground of the photos?

Thanks! It's one of the workshop manuals machang. Printed the sections related to bodywork before putting the car into paint. They're shared in the thread below:

http://forum.autolan...available-here/

Dude, where did you find the 3M sticky stuff from? I've never been able to locate it here in SL, had to get it down through ebay.

I bought the tape from Nil@nk@ Motors at Wellawatta (sometime back). They even sold it in meters (75 bucks a meter, the whole roll cost about 1200) I'm sure you'll be able to find the stuff around Colombo machang. Try shops that sell 3M products. I remember Pr3mium St@tioners at Liberty Plaza having them.

Hey did you printed the whole damn manual machan??????

lol. No machang, just the body repair manual and the sections on the exterior parts that might come in handy to the mechanics when re-installing the parts. There was an entire section on body colour and bumper alignment and stuff, so it was just a matter of giving the manuals to the painter and the mechanics at the workshop. They even asked if I got them from UniMo .

Hey Davy your work is great & useful too!!! How come the badge in the first photo has no joints between the letters in "LANCER" & the pics after has the badge letters joined?

Thanks! They're two separate badges. The one in the first photo is a cheap badge from Darley Road (which doesn't even come close to the original). Just bought it because it was cheap and I thought it might look better than the original. I was wrong. The one with joints (the original) will be what will go on the car.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Davy

[Davy]

Hi again guys,

I’ve finally managed to find the time to paste the badges on the car and thought of finishing up the DIY. While thanking everyone for their comments and suggestions let me explain the steps I followed to paste the badges on the trunk lid.

Things you need:

Masking tape | A pair of scissors | A sharp blade | A marker pen | Measuring tape

A small note:
The most important thing for me was to paste the badges on the exact locations as they were pasted originally. Therefore I made use of the workshop manual which had clear indications on the locations on the trunk lid to the last millimeter. Might sound crazy, but I wanted it to look as neat as possible.

First, clean the area using a cloth to get rid of the water, dust etc. I started to do this on a chilly morning right after it started to drizzle a bit, hence the water on the car.


I’m going to paste the three diamond logo first and it goes on the middle of the trunk and 73mm (± 1mm) below the top press line of the trunk lid (as per the manual).

Paste a straight line of masking tape across the top of the trunk lid.


Mark the horizontal and vertical measurement points.

To avoid pasting the badge even slightly rotated, we need a perfectly horizontal line. Hold the badge on the place where it will finally be pasted (as perfectly as possible), mark the lower edges of the badge on the vertical masking tapes. Now we have a horizontal line, the badge will be pasted relative to this line.


Do a trial paste using masking tape. Spend as much time as possible perfecting that horizontal line and bringing the badge to the correct location.

Carefully remove the tape from the 3M double sided tape on the reverse side of the badge.


HOLD YOUR BREATH… Don’t tremble…

Done


Thanks for reading. And again... your feedback is appreciated.

Edited July 24, 2017 by Davy
Fixed broken image links

[trinity]

Hey macho.. finally.. i was thiking to my self, what happened to the Davy's badge pasting thingy and then voila!! saw the update.. As always, nice and neat instructions.. Cant wait to see pasting of Lancer & GLX emblems too.. Great job machan...

Cheers!!

[Octanehead]

Nice work!

[NZer]

Nice job and the paint job seems tidy as well

[trinity]

Hello Auto Lankans,,,,

Thought to high jack Davy's thread to give some update on the same subject.... This is about fixing the Lancer letters on the trunk lid..Mine also had the Same Lancer emblem as Davy's before i lost them... Those badges are very hard to find and costs about 8K at the agents.. To my luck i was able to find OEM lancer letters from USA which had been taken down from a Lancer OZ... Its a perfect match...

Badge was fixed at home as a Do it with the help of your Dada project... in fact he did everything while i was photo shooting... (I have shaky hands since cant do sensitive stuff)

Ok here it goes..

What it should look like..

What you need...

Same stuff as Davy mentioned above..

Should specially mention about the workshop manual.. if its wasn't for it, this wouldn't be possible..

Here are the Lancer Letters with workshop manual page.. as you can see there's lot of stuff to be measured and its gonna be a hell of a job to complete neatly...

The short cut...

Instead of measuring as per the manual, i photo copied the page where it contains the Lancer letters and measurements by enlarging it to 300%. Then my friends you got a real stencil where you could place on the trunk lid and mark exact positions where the letters should be..

How you mark the letters..

Before pasting the stencil on the trunk lid, you should pierce small holes marking the edges of the letters..

Then stick the stencil on the trunk lid aligning the center line of the vehicle with the center line of the stencil... in my case center line of the vehicle is measured by drawing a line from top to bottom of the 3 diamond emblem by dividing it to two.(Please refer the 3rd pic above)

Horizontally it should be aligned with the horizontal trunk lid press line..

And then take a pencil and mark through holes which you pierced earlier..

Then remove the stencil and you could see the pencil dots like stars in the sky.. hi hi... Then paste a line of masking tape slightly above the dots, so that you could clearly see the upper and lower lines of the area where you should paste the letters...

And my friends here's the final result...

Davy's thread helped me a lot in figuring out many elements regarding the subject...

Thank you so much machan for the support through out

Cheers!!

Edited December 22, 2012 by trinity

[Sylvi]

Davy,

Your post is very educative to members who will have patient do by themselves.

I appreciate your job you have given step by step all details. Spending lot of time by taking pictures and up loading all.

Sylvi Wijesinghe.

[Davy]

Very well done trinity! That's one neat shortcut you've found there. I can only imagine the trouble you would have had to go through if you kept measuring for each letter instead of making that stencil. Good thinking!

My Lancer badge went up on the bottom left hand corner of the trunk lid (original location on mine), so the work involved in pasting it was significantly less. But as you said, I couldn't have done it without that workshop manual giving details up to the very last millimetre.

Here's mine after pasting the Lancer and GLX badges.

 

Edited July 24, 2017 by Davy
Fixed broken image links

[Davy]

Davy,

Your post is very educative to members who will have patient do by themselves.

I appreciate your job you have given step by step all details. Spending lot of time by taking pictures and up loading all.

Sylvi Wijesinghe.

Thanks Sylvi! Always nice to see positive feedback.

[trinity]

ado your car shines like as if it had been soaked in oil..:-)

Edited December 23, 2012 by trinity

[Davy]

ado your car shines like as if it had been soaked in oil..:-)

lol. Thanks bro. Results of the recent paint job gone well. The best part is that a cut & polish has not even been done yet!

By the way, if anyone else wants to share a badge related DIY, you're more than welcome to use this thread.

[Jaliya48]

Davy, was your repaint done by stripping the old paint to bare metal or otherwise? Was it done in a booth and was the paint acrylic or enamel? I'm keen on getting mine resprayed in the near future (when I've got some cash, of course ) and I'm looking at available options. My current paint job is hideous and unsightly! I think my mechanic used some cheap stuff to cut corners (not his fault though, my father never wanted to spend on this after he got his new car ) and there's no clearcoat either. It's also not pure white, more of a off-white which I think is enamel paint yellowing over time.

Edited December 26, 2012 by Jaliya48

[Davy]

Davy, was your repaint done by stripping the old paint to bare metal or otherwise? Was it done in a booth and was the paint acrylic or enamel? I'm keen on getting mine resprayed in the near future (when I've got some cash, of course ) and I'm looking at available options. My current paint job is hideous and unsightly! I think my mechanic used some cheap stuff to cut corners (not his fault though, my father never wanted to spend on this after he got his new car ) and there's no clearcoat either. It's also not pure white, more of a off-white which I think is enamel paint yellowing over time.

Replied to your question in this post as it looked more relevant in that thread.

Edited December 26, 2012 by Davy

[PreseaLover]

Old thread and great methods pointed out by davy and trinity, and thought of giving another method of pasting the badge... I didn't discover this thread when I was pasting my presea badge in my previous car so I invented my own method and it worked out fine...

1. First of all, I had a printout of the badge with me just like how trinity had it.

2. To paste each letter in a straight line, I took a thread and pasted one corner of the thread to one tail light from the center and pasted the other corner to the other tails lights center with a small cellotape just to make a straight line in the middle of the hood, where the badge letters should be replaced.

3. the same way I drew another line with another thread from below the tail light and pasted that printout I had with me along the pasted second thread.

4. Since I have done these 3 steps, now I know where the letters should be placed, and to be in a straight line I pasted letter by letter under the 1st thread.

5. Final step, now that your badge is been pasted, you can remove the threads and the cellotapes...

[Davy]

Old thread and great methods pointed out by davy and trinity, and thought of giving another method of pasting the badge... I didn't discover this thread when I was pasting my presea badge in my previous car so I invented my own method and it worked out fine...

Thanks PreseaLover.

I just noticed that none of my photos in the original and second posts were visible (broken links). I have just updated them. The process should be much clearer now.