banthapoodoo wrote:
Very nice! I have long owned an original DPCA with a very warped dome. It's long overdue that I take a stab at fixing that as best I can, likely with a heat gun as the primary weapon of choice. I can set the temperature on it and have it blow high/low speeds. How did you reshape yours? And if you care to disclose, what paint brand and colors did you use and what kind of surface prep to the vinyl did you perform, if any, before painting?
Thanks for the kind words! TO be honest I've gotten supper lucky and the two DPCA helmets I own were not warped at all. The re-shaping I did with this one had more to do with the T track mounting system on the face mask. I got the idea from a helmet that was sold not too long ago over at the RPF ( I forget the members ID). The T track was cut and lowered by a lot and it gave the helmet a more screen accurate dome position. This mod was done just about a month ago and it's not really even finished. Its still pretty raw under that dome. The Helmet was painted ages ago when I first got it so I made the cuts carefully, not wanting to have to repaint the entire face mask. However its being held together by some epoxy putty I had left over. I'm planning on taking that epoxy off and giving it a nice fiberglass reinforcement and a nice patching of the seems on the cuts.
As for the paint, I know its automotive BMW paint but I cant remember the name of the color or the code number. Like I said this paint job was done when I first got it back in the mid 90's. I didnt do too much prep work on it other than a light sanding (very light). I didnt even prime it. I knew one of the flaws on this helmet was the softer edges and details so I didnt want to take any more details away by sanding too much or caking too many layers of paint, so I opted to just lightly sand it and go straight to painting. I did use a very thin clear coat at the end.
All in all I think this is a good example of the potential the DPCA vader helmet has and I would love to see other try it out or take it even further.