Striped my hood today!

I finally got something for my hood. I've always hated how large and plain looking the hood looks so it was either a hood scoop or stripes. I went with the stripe. My future plan is to get a shaker scoop to go with the stripes. Anyway, the install was no cake walk. It was a pain in the arse. Took me 5 hrs which was a lot longer than I expected. The worst part, and the most time consuming, was getting the stripe to lay down at the front of the hood since it curves down in that area. I tried for almost 2 hrs and later decided to try a different method which was to completely remove the transfer tape and heat the vinyl with a hair dryer to make it more stretchy; that did the trick. The vinyl got easier to work with and I was able to finally get it to lay down. There was a few bubbles after the install but I popped those with a needle and worked them flat and some others will just flatten naturally over time in the sun. There's also a couple of sharp creases/lines which was the result of fighting with the curvature of the hood before I decided to heat the vinyl.

20" total width. 18" main stripe, 1/2" gap, 1/2" pinstripe.

So what did I learn about installing a hood stripe?

Answer: I should've stopped before the section of hood that curves down and removed the transfer tape before continuing. The transfer tape makes it harder to see the vinyl underneath and to know whether or not you're putting creases in it with your squeegeeing.

It wasn't a fun project but it was worth it in the end. Here's some pics...