Some are going to call for murder but thank you for the inspiration thebruce... Now I can see over the windshield and feel a lot more safer.
- My first step was to place a piece of tape in the center of the windshield so that I could see above it. It landed at 20" from the rubber seal at the bottom.
I then took a short ride to confirm its position. When I came back to my shop, I stopped with the tape line up with the bottom of the door. I measured 25ft between the door and the front wheel. Exactly what I had read on the internet... Good enought!
- I then went ahead and marked the center line of the windshield...
- I taped a few pieces of paper together and lined one edge with my center line to cover half the windshield. I hand traced what I thought would look like a nice profile from the center to the bottom edge.
I removed my sketch and cut it along the line to make my template which went right back on the windshield.
I first used it to place some short piece of tape under it and draw a line using a crayon to trace both halves.
- This is what it looked like when the tracing was completed...
- Not sure what would happened during the cut, I decided to do a sample cut in the bottom corner. Should anything bad happened, I may still have a functional windshield...
I opened up a relief for the blade to be able to exit the cut toward the outside of the windshield.
- First corner is cut. A lot easier than I first thought. Now fully committed to do the remaining.
- I cut it in section. This pics is from the right side but I was cutting about 6 to 8" at a time only. Allowed me to keep a clamp close to the blade keeping the vibrations to a minimum.
- Almost done! The last inch need to be done. Notice the clamps holding the loose piece from falling off!
- My weapon of choice for this job! My faithful skill saw fully loaded with a bi-metal blade, 14 teeth per inch ( Benchmark 1217-006 ).
The key was to keep the speed of advance and scrolling very slow. Too fast and the plastic will melt. You can feel it...
The shoe plate is covered with Duck tape to prevent scratching the windshield. Worked like a charm...
- The end result. I have not sanded the edges yet as I want to test drive it first, in case it needs any adjustment.
So far I like the look a lot better and the feel as well.
Cheers.
