Dress Up Your Bullnose: Emblems and Stickers on the Cheap

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. If your truck is anything like mine, and you got a big gaping hole right here where an emblem ought to be. Now, a lot of trucks, especially the ones, well, I mean obviously the ones after, I think it’s ’82 or maybe ’83, I came right off the top of my head, have emblems in the grill just like this. Ford did this for a lot of years up into the present day, and before that, they had the four letters were up here on the hood. But if you’ve got an older truck like mine, then it’s a pretty good bet that your emblem up here is either gone or cracked or faded or terrible or ugly or whatever it is. So today I’m gonna solve that. I’m also going to get some nifty chrome stickers put on my wheel center caps to dress them up a little bit, so that’ll be fun. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

On my ’85, the front grille emblem is about six and three-quarters inches, and so I went out and what I did was I found a seven-inch because this actual chrome part back here is about seven inches. I got this from eBay, and I had to go to eBay to get it, but when I’m done, that should just stick right on top of there and dress up a little bit. I got black instead of blue just because I’ve already got some black accents, and I think that’ll stand out a little bit better. So, but what I got to do first is get this old sticker backing plate off of there, and we’ll just use a screwdriver for that. There are a couple of clips back behind here that hold this on. They’re basically impossible to get to by reaching down in here. Now, I’m not going to reuse this piece, so I’m just going to bust it off, and there we go. Now that’s off of there. Very important that you get it clean so the adhesive will adhere correctly. So let me get my… just using some isopropyl alcohol for this. Shines it up real nice. And now this just sticks on. The trick is getting it straight and in the right spot. That looks pretty good. Push that on there and then take off the protective plastic. And there we go, a beautiful new black Ford logo stuck under my grill. Looks almost factory, and it sure looks a whole lot better than that big black hole I had on there earlier. Hey, even matches my license plate.

I got these nice Ford center cap stickers from houseofgraphics.com, and now they’re not sponsoring this video or giving me any kind of a discount or anything. I bought these with my own money. But the reason that I’m highlighting them a little bit is because I looked all over the place for something like this, and these center caps are kind of a strange size. There, let’s see if I can… there we go. The center part here between the ridges is 50 millimeters, which is kind of an odd size, and you don’t make anything that fits that, any kind of a stock configuration anywhere. So I had to go out and find some place that would make them custom, and I actually was working with a different place than house of graphics that does this same sort of thing, but man, they just weren’t very communicative, and I really couldn’t get a hold of them. And they took days to get back to me through an email, and then I finally gave them my phone number so I could talk to them, and they just never got back to me. It was terrible. I got to tell you, house of graphics, I emailed these guys on a Saturday evening. They got back to me Saturday night, and these were in the mail by Monday morning. So, you know, kudos to them for getting this thing out as quick as possible. It’s exactly what I wanted.

Now you see there’s a little bit of a texture on these. What I’m looking for was chrome and then black, and this texture is because of the transfer paper that’s on top here. So that will go away when I peel it, at least I hope it will. And so there we go. They, I only need four, they sent me six, I guess a couple just in case I screwed up. The only thing that I’m not a huge fan of with this is that they’re all sort of on the same sheet, so I’ve got to cut them out. I was kind of hoping that they would be in the actual same size circle as what I’m going to apply them, so I could just like put them on top of the… like I could just like put it on here to verify the fit before I actually peel the backing tape off. But that’s not a big deal. We’re going to figure out how to make it work. First thing I’m going to do is cut all of these out. Well, at least four of them so that I can apply them. I’m gonna keep these two together as my backups. So yeah, we’ll keep these two together as my backups and cut out the rest.

There we go. I got a set of instructions from them, but it’s pretty self-explanatory and pretty simple. And one of the things that they say in any place that you see that sells these kind of things tell you is that you need to make sure that the surface that you’re sticking things onto is extremely clean, as clean as possible. So that’s why I’m going to be using rubbing alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, to clean these off. Keep that on there, let it dry. You could do this while these are actually on the vehicle. I just happen to have my wheels off because I’m doing a brake job right now, so I figure while the wheels are off, that’s a good time to do this because it’d be a whole lot easier to do this with these off the vehicle. There we go, that’s about as clear as we’re going to get. So that’s what we’re going for. So what it says to do, which should be self-explanatory, is to remove this backing paper from the decal. I don’t have much in the way of fingernails, but see if I can get this done. Okay, okay, it should come up with the transfer paper, and now I can kind of see where it’s going to go. I’m going to move you a little bit this way so I can get this closer to what I’m doing, so I can get kind of right over top of it and see what’s going on here. My ability to center things is terrible, so I’m trying to get this as close as I possibly can without destroying the sticker. Okay, well, that’s… that looks like that’s where it’s gonna go, so we’re gonna go ahead and put it down there. Yeah, see, I’m a little off. I’m a little off. We’re gonna see how this goes. Uh, okay, now I got a couple extra of these, so if I’m not happy with this, I can always do it again. I got quite a few bubbles in there. It’s not great because I got a lot of bubbles in there. You can see them pretty clearly, but we’re gonna do another one and see if I can get any better at it. And if I have to come back and redo this one, I can. This time I’m going to start down here and push up this way with my finger. Much better. Oh, now that one looks like I know what I’m doing. There we go, nice. Now it really doesn’t matter which direction the Ford logo is going, but just want to make it facing me just because it’s nicer that way, I guess, from where I’m sitting. The hard part is lining this up inside the circle. Oh, nice. And the instructions say when you pull it, you pull it back like this, not up. Beautiful, stuck down all around the edge. Oh man, that’s nice.

So there’s two kind of… and a half. I think I’m gonna redo this one, but we’re gonna see how this last one here goes before I decide to redo this one. I’ve only got two spares. By the way, the first company that I contacted would not give me a spare. Well, I mean, I have to pay extra for a spare. So the fact that house of graphics just sent me two spares for free basically is amazing. And I should note that they didn’t have this particular graphic that I wanted in their stock. I had to specially request it because I wanted specifically a black Ford logo with that oval. I’ll really do this on here and I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. Nice, nice, nice. Oh, I’m so happy with that. So specifically what I asked them for, let me get it up here so you can see it, was the Ford logo in black with the chrome oval sort of outline around it, and then the Ford letters also in chrome. And what I did was I actually found a set of caps online that had that look but were the wrong size, and so I sent the guys at house of graphics a link to those caps and said, could you make me a sticker that would replicate this cap? And within a day, they had this sticker inside their little graphics program on their computer at their place and sent me a screenshot of what they’d done and made sure that I was happy with it before they printed it up. And then I said it was okay, it looked good, and they printed it up and sent me this stuff. So yeah, super happy.

All right, so I’m going to redo this one because I’m not happy with those bubbles, and I’ve got a couple extra, so let’s make use of the couple extra that I have. See if I can get this off of here. Well, they stick pretty good. Now, I do know that chrome in vinyl does not last nearly as long as other colors, especially out in the sunshine, because I’ve had chrome vinyl stickers on vehicles before that just didn’t last very long out in the New Mexico sun, especially. So if this vehicle wasn’t going to be garaged like it will be, then I might be more hesitant to use chrome as a vinyl color. But because I’m keeping it in a garage and when it’s outside, I’ll be having wheel covers on it to keep this stuff out of the sun, I think this chrome is going to last quite a bit more than my other chrome, which I got about a year and a half to two years out of it, but that was on a windshield, and so it was not only was it being battered by the sun all the time, but it was also being hit with wind and dust and everything else.

So all right, let’s see if I can do this better this time. The tricky part is getting it laid inside the circle. Looks like I’m pretty close. Looking not too bad. Looking not too bad. Oh yeah, and I still got one extra. Fantastic! Look at these. Oh, that looks great. So happy with that. So happy with that. I cannot wait to see what they look like on the truck. So I just realized that that last segment that I did was actually out of focus. So, but here’s the final product. Yeah, man, I am so happy with that. That looks so good. I cannot wait to see what that looks like on the truck. Um, so yeah, I’m gonna get these wheels on, and we can see how that looks.

So, well, I gotta say, if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to spruce up the looks of your old truck or car, an emblem is a good way to go. And I’ve really got to tell you that I am super impressed with these cap emblems, and I’m super impressed with the company, house of graphics. Did a fantastic job. They look really good, they were easy to put on, they are super communicative, they got back to me basically right away, and they’re very reasonable in terms of their pricing too. So definitely, if you’re looking for a custom emblem of any kind, any kind of a sticker that goes on your vehicle, pretty much any color you want, make sure you check them out. Like I said, I am not affiliated with them, I’m not being paid by them. I just like to highlight good online companies that take care of their customers and do exactly what they say they’re going to do, and house of graphics is definitely one of those companies. Make sure you check them out. And hey, you know, if you’re looking for a good way to spruce up your vehicle, little emblems, stickers, stuff like that, it’s an easy way to go. It’s just a couple of hours of work, if that, and makes a big difference. So as always, you guys have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, and we will see you next time.