Personally I like the way Adam did it because it may be difficult to get that decal material to contour to the stamping of the tin. Although you can apply the decal wet there is a potential for negative side affects down the road.

If you decide to apply the whole thing as one piece dry you need to hinge it with painters masking tape. If you want an explanation on how to do this send me a pm and i'll run it down.

mike

Thanks Alvy. I doubt it would have looked any better using the whole decal. I probably would have gotten frustrated and trashed the decal.

This post was started by JayNJeep for me and my resto on a 125. I wasn't in a place to make a post and he was helping me with some ideas. With all the good suggestions and much consideration here is what we came up with that worked rather well. The first picture is of the original tin in need of a restoration. We obtained some fine line tape and blue "anondized" paint made by Dupli-color. Both were available at O'Reily's parts store. The bare aluminum was polished with paste compound and the whole tin was cleaned with wax and grease remover. The black pin stripe surrounding the blue, the "cub cadet box", and the silver around the throttle control were all taped with the fine line tape. Regular masking tape was then used on other areas not to be painted. All the letering (F--N-R, Start, Slow, Fast) was carefully colored in using a grease pencil, also called a China marker. The tin was painted and allowed to dry. We then used a sharpe knife and "cut" the outline of the the letters. This gives a sharpe edge for the paint so the paint doesn't chip off. When a good outline has been made the paint was easily scraped off the grease marking. A light cleaning with wax and grease remover then removed the remaining red markings. Total time invested not including paint dry time was about 90 minutes. Thanks for all the suggestions!

Nice job Stephen!

Great job! :beerchug:

Very nice!

That looks great!

Wow, the dash on the 125 was originally blue?

Wow! This is exactly what I'd like to do with my dash tin. Mine probably wouldn't take a decal well because there is some gouging damage from the shifter. I'll have to try it when warm weather comes back!

105 Cub Dash Decal Install
 

I applied the Maple Hunter decal to my existing tin dash. Overall it went good, I cut it into two pieces and installed the top first. I did install it dry because I wasn't sure if I could get the water out from under with all the dimples. I taped the decal in the correct spot, removed the backing from half and slowly applied. Then I did the other side.

I followed the same steps for the bottom half. The decal did not match the tin perfectly so if you can save the tin like some of the other guys did I would suggest that.