I’ve been wanting to do something special with my helmet for quite a while. I figured a Colorado flag, but with the Lotus roundel in the center of the C instead of plain yellow. A couple years ago I had somebody lined up to do it, but he was always too busy. Six months ago or so I had somebody else slated, but that didn’t work out either. A few weeks ago I decided I’d do it myself. What’s the worst that can happen?

Two weeks ago I stopped by the Man Cave to purchase some vinyl. One of the guys asked what I wanted to do. I explained it to him and he went over to a rack of giant vinyl rolls. “I don’t have any yellow, but here’s some blue. And I have red in here.” I told him I didn’t need the yellow because I’d be using a sticker. He just gave me some scraps, no charge. Can’t beat that.

I was apprehensive about how to cut the vinyl so I watched some you tube videos. I learned about knifeless tape. It’s a kevlar strand you lay down, then put the vinyl over the top. Yank the strand out and it makes a nice cut. So I found some on eBay. 3M makes some, and somebody on eBay was selling a knock-off (made by 5M!). I found some genuine stuff and placed the order. Finally, I borrowed a heat gun and was ready.

First thing was to peel all the stickers off, take off the visor and HANS hardware, and clean it up as much as possible. It’s a bit scuffed up, but so it goes. Then apply the tape to get the blue stripes about right. I found a tiny frying pan the right size for the outside circumference of the C and used that as a pattern and cut it out with an xacto knife. All this was sized based on the size of my sticker.

I needed three hands to do this, so Michael helped. He worked the heat gun as necessary while I stretched the vinyl out. I’ve never worked with this stuff before, and I’m not a particularly artistic guy. But I figured the worst that would happen would be I waste some free vinyl and a sticker. I could always give it another shot later if I got close, or give up entirely if I did a horrible job.

The first stripe came out pretty good, until it came time to pull the kevlar thread through to make the cuts. It wasn’t quite as easy as the pro on you tube made it look. But I managed to get it to work before I gave up. The second stripe was a bit easier.

I cut my red circle in the shape of a Pac-Man. The Lotus Colorado sticker would cover the center part so I didn’t bother with any further cuts. Stretching the red (almost) circle didn’t go as smoothly as the stripes, but it’s not bad. There are a couple of small wrinkles and I had to do a little trimming because after stretching it, it was no longer perfectly circular. And the LoCo sticker has a wrinkle in it, too. But considering it’s my first time trying any of this, I’m quite happy with the results. It’s a helmet, and it will get more scuffed up in the years to come, so I wasn’t looking for perfection.

Yeah, I know the blue is the wrong color. I don’t care. I’m quite happy with the results.