Hula Doll - Repair
SO it was time to finally add a Hula Girl to the Jeep, searching around I found that my local Advance Auto Parts has a pretty nice looking Hula Girl, my local store also showed it in stock and the price was perfect. This is her story.
1. I did not do an unpackaging because... well because I did not expect my little Hula Girl to have an issue after just one day. Yuup! You heard that right, one day and she failed me.
2. I mean really, one day on the dash of the Jeep and my Hula Girl is dropping her skirt. I pulled her off the dash (not much of a problem as they used some pretty cheap foam tape). Just an FYI, it was not very hot outside... it barely made it to the high 70's. So, WTF is up with that?
3. Here is WTF is up with that. I mean really! Fucking Hot Glue, are you serious… HOT FUCKING GLUE and not even very much of it, a few little blobs is all that was put on the skirt. No wonder my poor Hula Girl was striping for the neighbors.
Really let’s take a look at all the detail on this Hula Girl, someone put a lot of time into the details of the paint, even the Hula Girl skirt is well done by hand with great attention to details and then you get to the final assembly and you glob a bit of hot glue on the skirt and expect it to hold?
I can only assume the person that made the decision to tack this skirt on with Hot Glue has never been inside an automobile in the summertime (The internal temperature of a typical car in the summer can be close to 200-F easily re-melting ANYTHING with HOT GLUE on it.) But, I’ll digress no more Advance Auto Parts, let’s get our Hula Girl fixed up.
4. Time to get out the sewing supplies. That’s right; all you need to do to solve this issue is run a couple of stitches into the back of the skirt and Bob’s Your Uncle. I used the rubber band to hold the skirt together till I got a few stitches in and that’s all you need to do, just make sure you tie off the ends with a square or surgeons knot and you are good to go. (You may need pliers to held push the need into the folded area of the skirt an also helps keep from poking those fingers.)
5. How about that foam mounting tape. Sheesh! It’s a jeep so I’m going with some good 3M side panel tape (the black stuff, also from advance auto parts); this way if the Jeep does a 180 the last thing I have to worry about is her flying around the cockpit area whacking me in the head.
6. DONE! She has been placed back onto the dashboard for a couple weeks now and we have even had some 90-F days here and she has not dropped her skirt once, nor has the 3M mounting tape budged.
Final Remarks;
this is a great item and if you are in the market for a dashboard Hula Girl you cannot go wrong with all the awesome details someone has put into her.
However, what I see here is it’s like running the Boston Marathon and getting 10-20 feet from the finish line and going over and sitting on the curb. That’s in reference to the use of HOT GLUE on the skirt, there really needs to be some sort of ridged fastener to hold the skirt together at the back, I believe a long time ago they actually used a small metal snap or hook like fastener like what is used on bras. Worse case here is they could just use tag pinning, that is those little plastic strings that hold price tags onto cloths that you have to pull out or cut off, at least this is not going to melt from the heat in the car like HOT GLUE will always.
* Great paint details
* Great hula skirt details
* Shakes her booty nicely when you drive
* Fails with HOT GLUE being used to hold the skirt on?!?!?! DUMB?!?!
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Bell Automotive Hula Doll
Part No. AC723/221367078
Autocraft (Aka: ADVANCE AUTO INNOVATIONS, LLC)
5008 Airport Road
Roanoke, VA. 24012
Part#AC723
http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_Hula-Doll-Bell-Automotive_25984497-P_N3031A_A|GRP60031___
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