Well, Western New York's notoriously capricious Spring weather cooperated over the weekend and I was able to get my new Ultra
Glide out of storage on Saturday. My friend Mark graciously allowed me to store the bike in his garage this winter so I could
actually park the car in mine. I was happy to see it again and it was just as I had left it last November. I disconnected the
battery tender, hopped on and it fired on the first push of the starter button. Oh, the sound of that V-twin rumble!
Anyway, I could wax poetic all day about the bike, the great ride I took after I did a quick safety check or the gorgeous
weather. But, my main purpose is to let you know about a little project I thought of a few weeks back which I (successfully)
completed yesterday.
Having the two little "glove boxes" in the fairing lowers is a nice little amenity. However, it always kind of bothered me that
the best that H-D could do on a $36,000 bike was to give you a snap-on vinyl cover to "protect" the contents. Obviously, Harley
sells a kit that will give you locking glove box doors, but of course it will cost you a few extra bucks. (Also, PJ57 sells a great door kit for much less than the OEM one and is described elsewhere on this site - here is a link to that thread:
http://www.cvoharley.com/smf/index.php?topic=38215.0 )
I went with the OEM kit, but from what I can tell, this should work with PJ's kit as well. I was a little disappointed to find
that the glove box doors came with a painted black crinkle finish. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but in my
mind, I wanted the glove box doors on my bike to look a little more special, befitting a CVO bike. So, I thought about ways to improve on the look and here is what I did (and believe me, if I can do it, you should be able to as well...):
I went to JoAnn fabrics and bought a one-foot wide piece of black vinyl upholstery material. The one I picked was very thin and
pliable and has a very leather-like appearance. Also at JoAnn bought a can of LocTite Heavy-Duty spray adhesive (I don't have
the exact product name/code, but if you check the label, it is designed for van conversion and marine applications). I wanted
my doors to have a nice little logo, too so I bought two small embroidered Bar and Shield emblems from my dealer.
I cut out two squares of the vinyl, each big enough to cover the glove box doors. I grabbed my handy Singer sewing machine (yes, I have a sewing machine), put on the heavy-duty needle and sewed the emblems onto the vinyl squares.
Next, I positioned the vinyl square so that the emblem was centered on the door and held it in place temporarily with some double-sided tape at the top. I then flopped the vinyl back, sprayed a light coat of the adhesive on the door and the backing of the vinyl. I let it dry for the time recommended on the adhesive can (a minute), and carefully pressed the vinyl onto the door, making sure there were no wrinkles or bubbles. I then flipped the upper part of the vinyl over, removed the double-sided tape and masked the lower part of the vinyl (this is important - I'll explain below). Again, I spayed a light coat of adhesive on both surfaces, waited for it to dry to a tack and carefully pressed the upper part into place. At this point, I flipped the door over. I sprayed some of the adhesive into a paper cup and used a small paint brush to apply the adhesive to the inside of the vinyl along the edge of the door. I also applied some of the adhesive on the edge of the door, about 1/8" wide. When it dried, I used my fingers to stretch the vinyl around the edge of the door towards the back. If you do this slowly and carefully, you can minimize wrinkles and bunching. Once the adhesive has cured (about an hour), I used an Xacto knife on the back to trim the excess vinyl leaving only about an eighth of an inch border. I then cut out the hole for the lock barrel and assembled the lock per the kit instructions. I installed the doors yesterday and they look awesome! (Here is a picture - sorry for the lousy quality, but I snapped it with my cell phone this morning before I left for work. I'll post some better shots later.)
Oh, as for remembering to mask the lower part of the door when applying adhesive to the upper part: On the second door, I forgot to do it and wound up coating the bottom third of my nice vinyl cover with sticky adhesive! I kicked myself thinking I would need to remove the cover, cut a new piece of vinyl and move the emblem. Fortunately, I had a bottle of GooGone, and after testing it on a scrap piece of vinyl, I was able to remove all of the adhesive and save my project. The GooGone did leave the surface a little greasy, so I used rubbing alcohol to get rid of the film. This actually worked out in the end, as the original finish on the vinyl was very shiny and cleaning it with GooGone and alcohol dulled the shine down so that it is a closer match to the surrounding trim on the fairing lower.
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Topic: Customizing glove box doors... (Read 2413 times)