I had to take the badges off because a small area at the lip of the boot needed repainting so i though i might as well get the whole of the back section done so it would look better.
first, removal. the C2 2.7 badge was pretty easy using a nylon cord and gently "sawing" behind it. The ALPINA emblem was a bit tricky and as it is so fragile, i ended up breaking the first A off. A new one was about £30 odd, so just got one instead of trying to salvage the old.
I took a photocopy of the C2 badge so that i could replicate the original sticky pad position and shape. I realised it would be much easier if i had some sticky printer paper to stick onto the new sticky foam and cut round it. i had some in silver so used that. The badge has a recess for the sticky pad of about 6mm and i managed to find some 3m VHB (very high bond) stuff....(didn't trust the non-branded stuff). mainly this is available in tape form, but i found a supplier on amazon who does sheets.
All ready to go with tools - tweezers, small and large scissors and sticky stuff removal aerosol.
I soaked the badge a few times with plenty of the glue remover until it was literally wet through (and i was slightly high in fumes), then began to get to work on removing the old foam. tweezers were handy, but it did not come off in one go of course. the foam seemed to come off leaving a sticky residue and gently scraping it off with a small flat screwdriver was necessary. I had to take care not to press to hard of course or this would spoil the badge as it is only ?aluminium.
part way there...
a quick once over with a paper towel with more glue remover and it looked like this!
ok, now for the new sticky pad. as it was 6mm think and kind of a rubbery foam, it was very difficult to cut exactly, but as long as it was close enough to the edges, it should hole the badge ok....
Unfortunately, i realised that the recess foe the numbers was much deeper than the recess for the C2 section, so the 6mm tape would have been to thick. Luckily i had some 3mm stuff (still 3M VHB) which i had left over form my pukar designs days, so this was used instead. this gave a flat profile for the back of the badge.
That was that, now to wait for a warm sunny day!
I emailed Alpina to ask for placement help and they reponded
"The position is 20 mm from the top and 20 mm form the light.
I hope this will help you.
Best regards
Bea Freibott
Export"
and whilst it was super helpful to get a response, i was a bit confused, so they sent me a diagram.
10 points for noticing the obvious error! (the badges are the wrong way around on this google images picture they used....what are the chances of that! But anyway, it really helped).
so, i created, printed and cut out a 20mm box and strip to help with location and alignment. I cleaned the paint with panel wipe ready to attack the new badges and as it was a warm day, the panel was already warm, so would ensure a better bond.
With both badges on, i certainly didn't want them jetwashing off, and am a bit (!) paranoid so applied a gentle pressure with some clamps using a block of wood to distribute the force and some double walled corrugated card so as not to squash the badges.
left that for a couple of hours and then admired my own handy work.
no longer a bare bottom!
and the front, just for the sake of it!
I hope that helps someone or in the very least was mildly interesting
