RV Adventures

The Blue Flame is now 15 years old. For the most part, it doesn’t look it. Brand spanking new Showhaulers coming out of the factory look very similar to what we drive, minus the flames of course. Our graphics (i.e. the blue flames) are very unique.

Our graphics are essentially big decals. They are not painted on like designs are on some rigs. Over time, the sun beating down on the hood has caused the portions of the decals facing the sky to become crazed (i.e. cracked).

We have tried a few times to find someone to replace our hood decals with no success. Most places don’t want to touch the curves of the hood or the work is way overpriced.

While at Homolovi State Park in Winslow, Arizona, a chance conversation with the guy at the next campsite led to a google search and finding a place in Phoenix that will replace RV decals. While I was in Green Valley with Dad, Jim stopped in Phoenix and called Tommy at Fast Lane Tints. Tommy took some samples to match the colors and told us to come back in a week or so. So we returned to Phoenix and Tommy was called. Let’s give Blue a nose job!

Onto the clean hood, the design (using the shadow seen in the picture above) was outlined in Knifeless Tape. Think of masking tape with a wire embedded in it. This video will give you an idea of how it works. Just click below or on this link: https://youtu.be/UWqIBnr-1yg?t=44 Watching 30 seconds will be enough to explain how the tape works.

Once the blue vinyl was stuck down flat, Tommy “cut” the vinyl much like shown in the video. He then layered down the gray vinyl in the same manner and finally followed it all up with black pin-striping vinyl to complete the design.

Here’s the finished product. What a difference! Go ahead, scroll back up to the top to see the before picture if you need to! Blue looks SO MUCH better!

It took Tommy 3.5 hours to remove the decals and do first side that was in morning shade. He came back out later that day for a couple of hours to do the other side once the sun had moved.

With the nose job completed, that concluded our time in Phoenix and Arizona. It was time to depart for Portland, Oregon and a very important university graduation.

So we are now in California’s Central Valley (avoiding the snow the desired route through Nevada would have given us) driving northward towards Oregon. We have a few days to play in Oregon before arriving at Callie’s on Friday. Our route and stops through Oregon haven’t been decided yet. We’ll figure it out as we go along. As usual.