Driven prep continues! It’s hard to believe how close the show is now, and the pressure is on to get everything ready for the 7th. The last few days our attention was focused on Brandon’s ST, a.k.a. Le Yeti, which I am happy to say is now just about ready for the show!
Brandon and I had been texting back and forth recently discussing his plans for the car and when we would meet up to get to work. He primarily wanted to wrap the roof, although not in black vinyl as most people do. Instead he had his eye on Arlon’s True Blood vinyl, a dark metallic red which I am very much a fan of. The roll was ordered and fortunately arrived very quickly, so on Sunday Mario and I met up with Brandon at his house to start the wrapping. With the largest piece – the roof – up first we wanted a few sets of hands since we’d be working with a relatively large piece of vinyl.
Brandon had fully cleaned the roof ahead of time and when I arrived the roof trim and antenna were off too. Before long we began wrapping and thankfully had the garage to work in as it started spitting outside. With the vinyl applied, all of the edges were trimmed and finished and the antenna and rails were reinstalled.
That was the largest and toughest piece out of the way and we were very pleased with the red roof against the white. At this point Mario removed the trim pieces from Brandon’s front doors and wrapped them in True Blood to match and bring some of the colour inside.
Before we carried on I decided to grap a few more shots. See the little Yeti on Brandon’s center cap? You’ll see more further on in this post…
After a little more work I headed back home to grab some dinner and brought some of the vinyl with me to cut out the next piece for the car. Later that evening I brought it back and we applied it, before we reinstalled the wing.
After a little more work we called it a night.
Fast forward a couple of days and I was back at Brandon’s house so we could finish up with a few smaller details.
Along with the roof Brandon had also wanted to wrap his mirror caps, though not entirely.
He had this two-tone in mind and the finished product really does look good. We followed the line on the mirror and cut the vinyl along it, leaving the vertical face white while the top went to red.
Wrapping the entire caps is the standard approach but this is a new take which I really like the outcome of.
Because we were working in the evening the lighting wasn’t the greatest so I decided to wait until the following day – when I could see the car outside – to carry on with photos.
It unfortunately wasn’t the warmest evening but we were able to meet at the casino for a little bit and check out Le Yeti in natural light.
One really small change which many probably won’t even notice is the wrapping of the ST emblems. They’re red from factory of course, but now the inset portions are covered in the darker (and metallic) True Blood vinyl instead.
The piece that I had cut at home following the wrapping of the main roof panel was this, for the top of the hatch. The Yeti logo was cut out of the vinyl so the original white paint shows through. Being located at the back of the roof (and in front of the raised wing) it’s not immediately obvious to onlookers.
One benefit of using red as part of his colour scheme is that it ties in to the existing red accents that STs have from factory – gauges, needles, logos, etc. This is a good example of how just a few carefully-selected cosmetic changes can really make a car stand out.
Moving to the back of the car, a little more red was added in the form of an OEM Fiesta ST third brake light, which replaces the white Focus ST piece.
Moving inside there are the wrapped trim pieces on the front doors as previously mentioned, courtesy of Mario…
…and to go with them Brandon wrapped the e-brake handle insert and even the adjusters on the air vents. The final touches were the new steering wheel emblem overlay, featuring a gloss white Yeti on a matte black background, and the Boomba shift knob.
With that, Brandon’s car is just about ready for the show now! A full detail is still to come and then it’ll be parked until roll-in next Friday.
-Bill