Can somebody help me make a template?
 

As those of you who were at Summit Point last weekend know, I use vinyl numbers on top of a magnetic circle for my days at the track (all 6 of them so far :wink: ). The triple digits take up a rectangular space of approximately 14" wide and 8.25" high on a circle with a diameter of 22." I hate the way it looks, particularly on my fugly 996 :roll: (There is a picture of it in the Gallery album for Summit Point March 12-13 (the penultimate pic).

I am either going to cut the magentic circle down to a rectangle slightly larger than the numbers, or an oval so that I can get rid of a lot of the white space of the circle (the numbers are black and my car is arctic silver). Cutting a rectangle will be easy. Can someone help me by making a template (using some scale that will fit on a 8 1/2" x 11" paper when printed) to see the shape and size of an oval that I could project onto the circle and use as a cutting template? If the template shows that the oval would look nicer than a rectangle (as I suspect it would), I will use the oval rather than cutting a rectangle.

I would be very grateful for your assistance.

Thanks,

TD in DC

TD

We just got new magnetic numbers for our car. We have side molding, so we only had 8 inches of height to work with and 3 a three digit number. My wife, Pam, will be at the autocross school Sunday so you can look at our pattern to see if it would work for you. She'll be in a red 944 #479.

Todd,

I'll bring some oval magnetic numbers to the Autocross School tomorrow. You are welcome to borrow these to use as a template or, if you are interested in them, I would be willing to sell them. I have 3 ovals for each of two numbers: 171 and 321 (my personal favorite). Ovals are white and the numbers are cut out. Naturally, my timing is good and I bought these for my black 993 just a few months before trading it in on my white car. Oh well.

I'll be volunteering tomorrow...you shouldn't have any trouble finding me. I'll leave the numbers in/on my car if you want to take a look when I am not around.

I liked the big circle with the 801 in it (was that the #?).
It was easy to see and the large numbers made your 996 look smaller. :shock:

if you need a template for numbers, I just mess around w/ MSWord or Wordperfect and make large numbers (one per page) until I like them. Then print, cut, and trace onto the magnetic stuff or vinyl....

btw, anyone know where I can get the magnetic stuff (NOT pre-cut, just straight off the roll) in yellow?

thanks.

HINT: if you make the nubers italicized it looks like you're going *faster* :twisted:

Vu and I ordered the roll of magnetic sheet in the thickest mil avail as the ticker the mil, the stronger the magnetic hold. I cut mine into a magnetic bra last year and used a large frying pan as a template to cut circles :D.

Bought 8" sticky vinyl numbers from the motorcyle store down the street for $3/3-pack and just applied them to the magnet.

Italicized numbers makes it look faster if you are looking at the drivers side. If you are looking at the passenger side, it looks like you are heading tail first into the tire wall :shock:

Same problem with the turbo twists. On one side of the car, it gives the look of acceleration, on the other side, you are going backwards!

Thanks to all for the help.

I finally remembered that powerpoint has "stock" shapes. I made a rectrangle at 1/4 scale to match the triple digits, and then I played around with the sizing and shape of the oval until I found something that worked. I then printed out the paper and used an overhead projector to shoot the image on the wall where I had taped up the numbers. Trace with a pencil, cut with the scissors and voila. Done. The primary benefit is that the numbers seem to stick much better now that the magnetic sheet is much smaller.

WOW, you have an overhead projector to play with!!?? (I'm thinking porn... :twisted: )

One of my word processor-savvy friends managed to get the italics to "lean" BOTH WAYS....

--thanks Jim.