Chinook RV

So I was looking at Ford Chinook photos, when it suddenly hit me that they all have a mid belt indentation down the entire vehicle.

Perfect place to put a reflective stripe! I thought. So I ordered a thin roll of silver-white 3M reflective tape, and put it in the groove. As you can see from the photos, it's nearly invisible in the daytime, but very visible when lit at night:
The cool thing is that the angle it's placed at doesn't matter. It always reflects straight back to the light source. Here, that means the camera seeing the reflected light from its flash.

The downside is that most approaching cars' headlights are lower than the Ford belt line, and thus don't reflect back as much to a driver's eyes. So I think I'm going to add another reflective line lower down.

I might use this other cool 3M tape I got, which appears to be black striping in the daylight, but reflects white at night. It's amazing stuff. I'll put it over my current lower black stripe. Btw, I had originally thought about embedding a fishing line thin 12v powered glow wire in that belt line instead. But my glow wire is more blue than white, and police departments tend to frown on anyone else using blue lights.

Continuing the reflective theme...

Bought a used computer controlled Silhouette Cameo pattern cutter off eBay for about $110. Added a $32 roll feeder accessory off Amazon. Bought rolls of stick-on vinyl from both places.

Handy hobby tool to make stencils and press on decals, small or long (12" by X feet). Even can cut cloth patterns. Basically it's an X-Y graphic plotter with a blade instead of a pen.

Comes with powerful but easy to learn software, which I upgraded for another $29 to the Designer version that, among other features, allows skewing any font to both the left and right. You can also import a picture and have it trace the outlines to make a stencil. The possibilities are endless. (Next I'm cutting out rubber gaskets for my marker lights! Bought a deeper blade for that.) Made my own replacement Chinook decals from permanent sticky silver reflective vinyl. Took about five minutes for the Cameo to trace the outlines of four sets with its tiny blade. It cuts through the vinyl but leaves the paper backing. You weed (remove) the unwanted material with a pick. Then you lift off the remaining pattern of letters onto a sticky transfer sheet, from which you then press them onto the target surface. I put them on today and just took a night flash photo: I'll take a daytime picture tomorrow when the rain stops.

Nice! Looks sharp!

I have a Brother Scan n Cut machine that does a similar job. I'm tempted to copy your idea, except then the rest of the paint/decal work would look even sadder in contrast What font did you use for the Chinook logo?

Kirah wrote:I'm tempted to copy your idea, except then the rest of the paint/decal work would look even sadder in contrast What font did you use for the Chinook logo?

True, I have an advantage in that the paint is mine, and I had long ago sanded down the old lettering and repainted a nice clear spot for any new letters.

This is the font i used for the CHINOOK:
It's a bit unique in having both a right and a left leaning italic (although I used a skew tool instead).

I also plan to put a large cursive "Concourse" on the rear. Haven't quite decided on the font for that. I've scanned in the image of the small name from my front fender, and I think I'll use it directly. This is the photo I told the software to trace. If I can figure out how to export the cutter file as SVG, I will post it.

Thanks!

Man it's been a long winter. Haven't gotten hardly anything done on the Chinook in months.

So when it warned up to 50F today (just before we get another 3-5" of snow tonight) I cut out more reflective vinyl lettering and installed it.

Yes, I went a little art deco with the wings Also added "Concourse" to the back. It's from an enlarged scan of the ones on the front fenders: Can't wait to see them all shine at night!
Kev

I'm going to have to drive out to New Jersey at night (with sunglasses on ) I hope airplanes don't start landing on your roof ("hey, is that the airstrip?")

I'm curious about something though: I may be conflating this with trailers (I'm more familiar with those rules), but I thought that any vehicle over 80" wide had to have the mandated pattern of clearance lights front and rear. My Chinook does have the same rear pattern as my over-80" trailer does, both front and rear (trailer has no "front" of course). But I think I see that your front clearance don't have the pattern. The general idea is a cluster of three in the center, then two edge ones. Like so:

∞______∞∞∞______∞

But I only see two wide-set ones on the front of your Chinook, not the usual five.

Trailers have an additional pair that I guess vehicles don't have (?), which is a side clearance light pair, one amber/forward and one red/rearward. Oftentimes these are in the middle on the fender, but not always (but then trailers can be awfully long and dark). On my Chinook the front edge ones do kind of wrap around the side, so maybe that works for both, or maybe that part is only a trailer thing.

Now I'll have to go look and see what other mid-90's Chinooks have.... (you probably already know )

Here is my '99 (horrible crops, sorry). I like the reflectorized clearance lights for finding my rig at night.

I think Blue is right about the marker lights. I am surprised that there are exception.

That retroreflective vinyl looks real nice!

Yeah, I have idea how they got away without the three wide-body indicator lights. Yet I've seen other 92-94 Chinooks with only two lights up front. Perhaps Chinook was simply low on yellow lights?? And/or the rules were more of a suggestion than hard law back then.

A few months ago I posted a short piece about indicator, clearance and marker lights in the Reference section. Each nomenclature has a specific purpose:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=811

Clearance lights do apply to motor vehicles as well as trailers. Btw, the reason some trailers (such as many skinny horse trailers) have clearance lights on their low fenders which stick out, instead of up top on the skinnier body, is because the fender tops are the highest spot on the *widest* points, and widest takes precedence over height for clearance lights.