Debadged & Painted Trunk
 

Went over to my in-laws house for the weekend and my father-in-law offered to mod the trunk lid as a b-day present. Figured I'd accept it. After thinking it over, we chose the trunk lid logo/light piece. The idea would be to smoke the car down the line. I've got an Argento, so the Black on Silver would be a decent look for the future. Just got finished debadging the logos and waiting for the clear to set before doing the final wet sanding, buffing and sealing to put it all back together. More pics of the final piece to follow.

Prepping nozzles for painting
http://i.imgur.com/r8SR1.jpg


Painting
http://i.imgur.com/WCyAJ.jpg


Closeup of the skull. I wasn't really a fans of skulls or flames, and preferred just a solid black, but since it was a present, figured I'd have nothing to lose. Came out better than expected. Worse case, the idea was to just paint over the skull black and have a solid black bar. I think I'll keep the skull for a while. :D
http://i.imgur.com/pFA00.jpg

The whole piece
http://i.imgur.com/D9JVc.jpg

Batman... just because =)
http://i.imgur.com/eTKZA.jpg

Installed Pics: A bit dirty as I've just driven back from Michigan and the rain hit.... but it looks pretty decent. Still have to wet sand + buff it to get rid of the slight orange peeling. I didn't get to let my father in-law finish up the final wet sanding + buffing due to scheduling and curing time, but since I could do that, I installed it and came home.

Overall, I think turning the trunk lid logo cover black adds a nice point of interest for the car and pleasantly breaks apart the lines in the rear. The skull from afar is definitely subtle enough to just be passed by as well during the night or the day, so it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb which I had reservations about.

http://i.imgur.com/TCain.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/OWOSA.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wIE3f.jpg

Very cool. That's a very nice gift. The man has talent.

The piece is so full of awesome. Please update when you install it back on.

Added installed pics

Very nice. The skull is subtle.

Thanks. Cant wait to smoke the tails once I get the current ones replaced for condensation.

I like the black, are there no holes behind the emblem he had to fill? I think you could do a carbon fiber roof overlay and wrap this piece too and it would look pretty cool.

Honestly I want solid silver and that clean look - Congrats, I want that debadging hahaha.

Works well with the silver. :w00t:

Would be a slick way to go. Cf wrapped roof would also be a nice accent.

The holes were filled with filler.

I think so too. The silver black works well to contrast each other. Design principles 101. Big against small, dark against light, repetition, lines, implied shapes and proportions. These all create the movement that's pleasurable or not.

Hehe. Essentially, the black was a cost effective debadging which I had wanted. Black is black is black. A can of clear and a can of black is an easy way to debadging without color matching.

I went to a world class body shop and it came up that black is the absolute easiest color to color match. Why? Because there is only one black. Hardest? The ones with a million variations. Aka silvers...

So the point here was to debadge cost effectively without compromising the design aesthetic. Imo, The clean look for this car will very hard. It doesn't lend itself like the clean dubs you see being done. There's hundreds of lines everywhere in these panels adding character subtley. The trick is to bring them out without ricing the hell out of it. :D. I think two tone will be one of those strategies to pull it off. Once everything is smoked, it will remove a significant amount of the busy-ness of the many colors thatcomewith lights and allow the bigger shapes to stand out.

Looks good, when i saw "skull" i was like :confused: but it actually looks really, really good!!!

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I also just noticed how similar the shape of the fake diffuser is below it. I wonder if it would look good to black that as well, or if the texture would throw it off.