It’s a wrap
THAT TITLE MIGHT make you think I’ve finished the Singer. That it’s done, dusted, ready to sing along backroads without a care. Not so: the engine is back together, it runs and it sounds very enthusiastic, but it’s still some way off completion.
What I’m reporting on here is the transformation of its radiator shell from a painted finish to the lustrous chrome it should have. The shell had been painted in body colour years ago because it was in a ropey state, so with the help of some filler it aped instead the painted-shell look of racing Singers.
But I wanted chrome. A new, reproduction radiator shell is £695, and then it has to be chromed – so maybe £1000 all in. Ouch. Then a restorer friend, Adam Redding, had a brainwave. ‘Vinyl wrapping is all the rage,’ he said, ‘and have you seen those chrome-look cars?’
So the shell’s past repairs were made better, silver paint applied and then it was off to WrapStyle in Uxbridge (www.wrapstyle.co.uk), run by Faisal Mir. His vinyl demons, Alex and Costi, took a sheet of sticky-backed chrome vinyl, stretchable with a heat gun, and lovingly laid it over my shell, sealing the edges and making doubly sure of durability on the inner edge with a strip of heat-bonded black tape, which will be hidden by the grille mesh that bolts to the front of the shell.
It was all done with one piece, joined at the base where no-one will see it. The result is stunning and convincing, but I must be careful not to scratch the surface which is obviously not chrome hard. This is the first time that WrapStyle has wrapped a rad, so it’s a bit experimental.
Will it last? That’s what we’re all keen to find out.