Perfect opportunity to make a set of them for myself. Here's what I did.
I began by cutting out a piece of aluminum to fit the spot behind the back window. Here's a shot of the two sides.
I then marked out the lines on the aluminum to show where I want to attach the decorative ribs. I put a curve in the aluminum to match the curvature of the body panel it will attach to.
The ribs themselves were made out of some 1/4" closed cell foam material I hade laying around. I cut the foam into 14mm wide strips and then put a 45 degree angle on each side to give me a top dimension of about 7mm. You can see what I'm talking about in the next shot.
I used crazy glue to attach the decorative strips. I left plenty of overhang to let me cut them off at just the right length.
When all the strips were glued I then placed a layer of fiberglass on top of them to get them to stick permanently to the aluminum. I'm no fiberglass expert, the picture below is a testament to that. But, you get the idea of what I was after.
Once the glass was cured I sanded and faired with bondo.
When all the sanding was done you can see I got a pretty nice profile.
I then worked on getting the mounting holes in the right place. I decided to use screws and netserts to attach the panels. I really don't like those push on clips that I know attached these panels in the first place. I always seem to break them.
I applied some rattle can gloss black paint for now and attached them to the car. Here's the final result (ignore all the dust).
The screws really don't show as badly as they do in these pictures. Not a bad result for hand made. Definitely not an exact match but I'm happy with the result.
