Playmobile Bicycle Valve Caps

As you might know from my latestinstructables, I bought a beat down bicycle (made by NSU in the early fifties) with the idea to create a bike worthy and capable of towing my red kids-trailer.

The bike is done by now, and this instructabe is about the custom valve caps, I made for it.

Step 1: Materials and Tools

Materials:

• valve caps (check carefully witch ones you need)
• playmo heads (source: ebay)
• playmo helmets/hats (source: ebay)
• spraypaint

Tools:

• powerdrill with drillbit
• sliding gauge
• glue (the special brand for plastics or hot glue)
• file or sanding paper
• vice
• masking tape
• standard tape
• screws
• cardboard

Step 2: Drill Baby Drill

Now clamp the neck of the playmo head firmly in your vice, then measure which size of drill you need (mine was 8mm). Use a standard drill because if you aim straight down into the head (remove hair first) it will center itself almost perfectly.

Now hold the head with your fingertips, while drilling straight down. Be carefull not to drill to fast to avoid melting the plastic. When you are trough, the head will come off its neck. Move it up and down the rotating drill one or two times, then take it off the drill.

Maybe you will need to trimm of a bit of the plastic around the hole with a file or some sanding paper.

Step 3: Get the Glue (gun)

Stick the valve cap in, so that it sits flush with the neck. Then turn the head around, pour in some glue and let it set (best over night).

After the cap is fixed into the head you can glue on the hair. Again: let it set! In the meantime you can focus on the paintjob for the helmets....

Step 4: Match It to Your Bike

To fix the helmets for the paintjob, I took some screws, stuck them into a piece of corrugated cardboard and wrapped some tape around the crewheads (sticky side out). This made a simple rack for painting the helmets.

First I gave them a coat of white, let it set over night.

Than I took masking tape (the blue one from 3M, meant for paintbrushing) to mask the rally strips. To avoid to that the second colour crawls underneath the masking tape, I covered it with another coat of white.

After about half an hour, I finished it up with red, took of the masking tape (another half hour) and gave it a few layers of glossy clear coating.

The next day I finished everything up by gluing the helmets onto the heads.

Step 5: Mount and Enjoy

The last thing you've got to do is to screw on your new valve caps and enjoy your pimped ride!