Jimmy tailgate paint ideas

[My3Sons!]

One thing that's always bugged me about my Jimmy is it came with a Blazer tailgate, so it says Chevrolet and not GMC. That, and it's pretty rough and when I had all the body work and paint done, I didn't have any work done on it. Soooooo, I finally splurged and got the GMC tailgate from LMC and dropped it off at the paint shop. I've been surfing around trying to get ideas but far and few between. Thought I'd throw up a request for some pics of how some of you might have painted the GMC with an offsite color? My truck is Audi Red, so I'm thinking offset with white letters, or white borders so the red stands out on the letters. Any other ideas?

[bouncytruck]

Mine is bone stock with the solid white chevrolet letters. I like the clean classic look. Not very original, but it looks nice. White boarders could look good, but it might be difficult to get them even so it doesn't look hand done. You could go with decals and then swap them if you don't like it.

[DANTES JIMMY]

Find a local vinyl shop and have them cut up something and if you dont like it just take it off an get new ones

[skorpioskorpio]

Originally Posted by My3Sons!

One thing that's always bugged me about my Jimmy is it came with a Blazer tailgate, so it says Chevrolet and not GMC. That, and it's pretty rough and when I had all the body work and paint done, I didn't have any work done on it. Soooooo, I finally splurged and got the GMC tailgate from LMC and dropped it off at the paint shop. I've been surfing around trying to get ideas but far and few between. Thought I'd throw up a request for some pics of how some of you might have painted the GMC with an offsite color? My truck is Audi Red, so I'm thinking offset with white letters, or white borders so the red stands out on the letters. Any other ideas?

I've thought about having a pinstripper just paint the bevel. If you paint either the letters or the oval inset on the GMC gates it isn't subtle, either way it's a big blob of color. The Chevy gates are relatively small letters in comparison. Also if it's still bare you could have a powder coater do a 2 stage metallic in what ever pattern you want before you paint and have it look like either chrome letters, oval or just the bevel. Red is always tough, what color is your top? White against red done too little doesn't look good in my opinion, it shallows the depth of the red, and black done too much starts to muddy the red. Don't get me wrong I love red trucks and haven't driven anything but as a daily driver in 20 some years, but contrasting colors can be a difficult balance. You need to try and tie it to something already there.

[bouncytruck]

I forgot that the whole oval inset is white on the Jimmy. I like the pinstripe idea.

[jaros44sr]

Hope you tried to fit the tailgate first....

Have you thought about goldleaf, it sure looks good on a firetruck. Also, i saw a maroon bowtie on the back of a red '55 once, sounds wierd but, it worked

[My3Sons!]

thanks for the tips guys. I've been going back and forth on stock (as Bouncy describes it) and also where just the letters are white, but as skorpioskorpio points out, I don't really have anything to tie it in, I never put the top on, and if I ever do go the soft top route, I'll go black......so, I think the vinyl route might be my safest bet, and then probably just go with white letters. Hmmmm, I didn't fit the tailgate first, what should I look out for?

[jaros44sr]

Well, wouldnt you want to make sure it fits, before its painted. Cant change much afterwards, without money. Just read some bad things, and thought id give you a heads up

[My3Sons!]

Well, all is right in the world now. Finally got the tailgate replaced with the proper GMC logo. Way more money than I had hoped to spend, and way harder to install than I had first thought. First problem I ran into was getting it painted, got a call from my body shop, said it was ready, only to come pick up and find 4 or 5 BIG runs in the paint. Not acceptable, so back it went to get repainted. Went the second time to pick it up, repaint was a success, no runs, but when I flipped it over it was all scratched from the sawhorses. I tried not be a jerk, but went to the owner and said "I don't want to tell you how to do your job, I don't work in a paint shop, but put a freaking towel down, it's not complicated." So once that was fixed, got it home and ran into install issues, I needed to rob hardware from the old tailgate, but because it had been painted intact, the screws to get the latch out would not budge, so I took the easy way out and bought new, an extra $142....above the roughly $500 I had into it so far. Then went to install, and since I didn't have the benefit of taking the old apart, I didn't have the knowledge of how to put it back together, had the damnedest time getting the clips correct, its such a tight area and the risk of scratching the paint....now that I think of it, I should have taped off the entire area, duh! Anyway, most people would think I'm nuts to spend that much money just to change from Chevrolet to GMC, but to me it was driving me nuts. Now just need some sun to drive it again!

[My3Sons!]

Ohh, and I have the vinyl, may try to experiment with white letters and see what trouble I can get into....

[bouncytruck]

It looks good. The sun should be out this weekend. Hopefully I'll see you cruising around.

[red71cheyenne]

I like it just the way it is, but the pinstriping idea sounds cool...