There is exactly one GEM in my neighborhood, mine. The few times I have taken it out on the streets I have noticed a lot of gawkers and confused drivers so I thought it might be prudent to put some clearance/corner/parking lights on this thing to give oncoming drivers a sense of how wide I am. Especially useful for when it get’s darker out.
I REALLY wanted to use Dodge Charger or Cooper Mini curved lights and flush them into the fenders but the cost was a bit steep and the extra time and fab work was getting annoying. (feature creep) I really wanted this project to be somewhat done sooner than later after being in my shop for 2 months.
I ended up with going with cheap led trailer lights.
Orange ones up front, red ones in the back and wired them all up to ignition so they turn on with the key. A few quick disconnects allow me to take the rear body off when needed.
I’m quite pleased with how they came out. This is in direct sunlight but they are plenty bright in person.
(the binder clips are temporary until I pull the fender off and affix the wire this weekend.)
Very nice job! I thought maybe the binder clips were so you could flip them out and you’d have curb feelers when you need them. LOL
The car looks awesome! One thing I did on mine that you might consider is to vinyl dye the seats with black on the outer sections. I left the centers gray and put black on the rest and it really pulled it all together on my car. They have other colors too.
Thanks Mr.Vern.
Funny you mention that, I was looking at vinyl color options on ebay today. I do have something interesting planned but I need to give @Inwo a few more paychecks to get my charging needs where I want them. 
I think doing a new seat color or possibly even new seats over the winter will be a stage two project.
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I thought about custom seats but I have too much in mine as it is so I decided to try vinyl dye. I’m so satisfied with it that I don’t even want different seats (unless I could find a reclining one). By time I bought acetone and the paint I had less than $30 in the whole thing. I even painted the dash and the steering column black to get more contrast on the car. I just need something on the very front to break it up a bit and I’m done with cosmetics.
Look slick. I can’t tell if its the low light or not but did you do a full bedliner spray?
Yes, I chose it because its different and I live in a lake community and somebody is always throwing a paddleboard or kayak or tube or something in or on it so I wanted it to be durable. I really love the way it came out. It catches a lot of attention for sure.
oh for sure. I love it too. I did on the trunk box I made. I plan on doing it more, I’m just deciding on color and locations still. The standard paint on this thing is too delicate for what we all use them for I think.
Yeah, I was torn because my family didn’t want me to do bedliner. They wanted burnt orange and I was going to go gray standard paint if not bedliner. When I picked it all up from the painter I thought I messed up bad. It didn’t look good at all. Once the wheels came in and then i started adding the black contrast everywhere, I fell in love with it. I have no regrets. I managed to scratch the front a little bit and I just took a can of gray paint and filled in the area and you could not find that spot if I told you too. Its so easy to touch up small blems.
I converted it to lithium and reprogrammed the controller and its a completely different car. There are hundreds of GEMs and golf carts in my community and this one catches everyone’s eye just because of the looks and being 4 seater. Then when I going flying by them up the big hills they really take notice
This winter I will do my 2 seater. I have the batteries sitting on a shelf. I’m torn between the burnt orange my family likes and Lambo green. if you google custom GEM cars you see some really cool ones with the bright colors. I might just do that to the next one.
Yep, im all lithiumed up here too. People gawk at my GEM all day long.
Hey, you know you can buy tint-able bedliner right? You can have your burnt orange with metal flake and do a high pressure spray and get a nifty finish that way.
I say that because I’m leaning towards doing some desert sand bedliner.
Yeah, I used tinted on that one. I just tinted it metallic gray. It’s really interesting up close because the metal flake didn’t distribute uniformly like in regular paint. It sort of bunched up and looks almost like bluish water drops in many areas. Its trippy and fortunately in a neat way. I’ll probably go with a standard paint on the 2 seater because I seem to be the only one who uses it - and that only when my family takes the other one. Once its pimped out, I’ll probably use it more but for now the lithium cart is so much fun to drive that it gets all the use.
The one thing with bedliner is that you better get it right the first time. It would be a nightmare to have to strip this and repaint!
Thats funny. I used metallic grey too and it just looks black from afar on my spray. I’d like to try a satin additive. I wasn’t a fan of the metallic too much on the trunk.
I wanted it to match the Magnetic Gray on my 17’ F150 but everything has moved to water based paint and he couldn’t match it in lacquer based with his system so we chose a color sort of close to it. I’m happy with it in the end. Would have liked it a bit darker but…
I wish I had sprayed the trunk in black with the gray top to break it up. I just put my Linkbak on it because its got a nice black contrast and it holds my clubs.
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