Printing on flexible plastic.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The sliding strip on the auto gear selector on the old SD1 Rover didn't survive the oven which baked the new paint on. It's well and truly frazzled.

It's approx 4" x 12" and somewhat under 1mm thick. It's black in the middle, but with translucent green at either side to allow the bulbs beneath to illuminate the gear you're in. In other words, it slides in a housing controlled by the gear leaver.

I could make and print out something similar on the inkjet. But don't think it would survive for long. Would a laser print be more robust? (Both overhead projection transparencies)

Or should I simply use some paint? If so which sort, and what kind of transparent sheet?

[Set Square]

How about printing it in colour on an overhead projector transparency designed for ink-jet use - and then laminating it? You could use an A4 laminator pouch and then trim it to size after laminating. It won't be

*quite* 12" long - but pretty close.

Otherwise, it's a trip to a breaker's yard to look for an SD1 Auto from which to canabalise it!

Incidentally, was the whole car in the oven after a body re-spray? If so, I would be worried about all sorts of other bits which may have got damaged by the heat - particularly rubber insulation on the electrics and windscreen seals, etc.

[Colin Wilson]

I wonder if you printed on a transparent, then laminated the printed side...

[Ian Stirling]

I've done a similar thing - to replace the numbers on a microwave with ones that are not stylish, but have the benefit of actually being readable. Laminate, and it may well work fine. Depending on the translucency, laminated paper may even work.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Worth a try - I've got a laminator.

Not many in breaker's yards these days - and they'd want to sell the whole gearchange.

Nothing else appears to have suffered. But then it's common practice to bake cars after even a partial re-spray, so I'd not expect there to be problems.

[Andy Dingley]

IMHE, OHP sheets are flexible enough for this sort of job. Laminated paper in plastic isn't - and it will de-laminate if repeatedly flexed.

BTW - Tesco are selling A4 laminators for just over 12 quid at the moment !

[Rob Morley]

A4 is more than 14" on the diagonal ...

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

A laser print is fine. I used them for making PCB transparencies and they are quite robust. I have some laser film still lying about I think, if you need some. Use !Draw and you can knock off the strip in no time.

[Matt]

You could always fit a CVT from a Prius ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

No problem with the graphics. But I've only got an inkjet colour printer. I've got transparencies for that though, and I also use them for PCB production. But I'd not call them robust.

Since it's raining and work on the car has stopped, I'll knock one up and laminate it.

And I'm not quite sure how I'd produce a file from Draw that I could give to a printer, etc?

[Set Square]

Indeed it is! So perhaps you'd like to explain how the OP can get a 12" x 4"

*rectangle* out of an A4 sheet.

[Set Square]

I wouldn't have expected the gear selector strip to suffer either - which made me wonder whether they'd turned the wick up a bit too high!

[John Schmitt]

Even laminated 'ware the rain. Inkjet ink does not like the wet.

Assuming you are a bit conversant with MS Paint, That should suffice.

John Schmitt

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Do the artwork in !Draw and email it to me. I'll colour laser print it onto a transparency for you.

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Dave uses a modern, efficient OS rather than Mickeysoft stuff. :-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Well, there's loads of other plastics which are ok. It's possible this strip is celluloid which IIRC has a pretty low melting point.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm not and have no intention of. ;-)

The only MS product I use is IE 5.5 to access those odd sites that my RISC OS browsers won't.

[John Cartmell]

Make sure that you use a laser transparency! The ink jet versions may well not stand the heat. If you use the ink jet printer and want it to last then use black ink - ie not colour or even a mixture of colours to produce a black effect.

[and how is RISC OS managing to take over uk.d-i-y?! ;-) ]

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Very kind, Andy, thankyou. However, I'll try laminating a transparency printed on the inkjet first, but keep the Drawfile in case I have problems.

[Rob Morley]

I missed the 4" bit :-)