Product development and testing

On first blush, it looked OK.  But look closer.  What kind of carburetters are those?  They're not HIF's, which were the standard carberetter on '73 & '74 MG-B's.  Once I noticed that, I started looking closer and closer.  Eventually I sat down and wrote a list of at least a dozen issues with this decal.  That was the point I decided to make my own.

If I was going to make one, it had to stand up to living under the hood of an MG-B.  A hot, oily, dirty, possibly rusty, environment.  So I got some decals made from the same basic material but with minor variations.  These decals were stuck to painted steel.  To test their resiliency, I mixed up a slurry of 2 kinds of anti-freeze (Dex-Cool and generic), brake fluid, Kriol penetrating oil, PB Blaster penetrating oil, 20W50 motor oil, and carburetter cleaner.  I slathered this mixture on the decals, and scrubbed them with a paper towel, and left them out in the sun for a few weeks.  To my surprise, they faired pretty well.  A little too well actually.  The paint didn't even bubble.  So then I took straight brake fluid, and scrubbed again, and left in the sun for another couple weeks.  And then a few more weeks, and I got what I was looking for.  This:

Yep, that's rust.  It wasn't there when I started this test.  This picture is a little odd, because there is some over spray on the decals, but the laminated decals certainly held up well.  That's the kind of decals we make.

6 revisions of the artwork, and 3 months of testing later and we have our first product!

Head back to the MG-B products page.