Click for a larger image

Bam! I’m now the proud owner of a white Helio Ocean. Okay, fine - I’m the proud owner of a white Helio Ocean body and a bunch of disassembled Helio Ocean pieces. But it’s getting closer!

I sprayed it in about 15 light coats over the period of a day and a half. The texture is gorgeous, looking far less spray-painty than I expected. It still needs a light wet sanding before it’s clear coated, but it was nice to not have to deal with nasty orange peeling.

(Ignore the big solid white areas in the middle of the frame pieces - it’s just masking tape.)

Pretty soon comes clear coating, where I’ve got a decision to make: Do I spend around six dollars on a really nice, hard clear coat.. or do I dump 53 dollars (after shipping) into getting a can of soft-touch clear coat? First will look shiny and sexy, but the latter’s texture will be much more like the original Ocean paint job. I’m definitely leaning toward the first option for the sake of not making myself poor.

And now I’m going to make your silver pants blue black Ocean white!

The hunt continues. Last post, I was trying to track down an Ocean body that hadn’t been sprayed with its soft-touch coat yet.

After about a week and a half of digging around, it didn’t seem like this was going to happen. So, I said screw it - If I couldn’t get an Ocean body that hadn’t been sprayed with soft touch yet, I’d remove the soft touch coat myself.

I did a bit of research, trying to find any chemical strong enough to remove the clear coat but weak enough that it wouldn’t eat the plastic. It seemed like for every one person saying something would work fine, another three were saying it would destroy the plastic and punch me in the face. I didn’t really want to take any chances, so I grabbed some sand paper and a bottle of elbow grease, and attacked.

(For good measure, I wore a respirator I had laying around. I had no idea what would be flying around in the area as I sanded this thing down. I was doing the sanding out in front of my house, which was probably not the best idea in hindsight. My gas-mask-esque contraption totally spooked at least 2 of my neighbors.)

About 3 hours of disassembly and sanding later, my Ocean is ready for painting:

Click for larger image

It was a bit of work to make sure I didn’t accidentally round any of the surface edges, break any tabs, or scratch up the camera mirror - but it all worked out, as far as I can tell. I lost the Helio logo that was pressed into the paint on the battery, but I’m pretty sure that was unavoidable.

Next Steps:

1. Masking off all the stuff that needs to be masked.
2. Give it a solid cleaning
3. Spray it with 5 or so uber light coats, possibly sanding between coats depending on how it’s holding.
4. Clear coat
5. Reassembly
6. White Ocean Whoooooo!

Off to the hardware store to research paints and clear coats. More coming as it’s finished.

If you’ve ever spent a few minutes talking with me, you’ve probably learned at least three things:

• I’m allergic to mushrooms.
• I think yams are the whackest of all the vegetables
• I really want a white Helio Ocean.

Actually, you probably haven’t learned any of that. I don’t really talk about those things often - it just seemed like an interesting intro. Regardless, they’re all true. I can’t do much about the first item, and yams are too far gone at this point for anybody to save. But that last item, my desire for a white Ocean.. I think something can be done about that.

From what I hear, there was at least a color sample made of a white Ocean. For one reason or another it wasn’t what they were looking for, so it never saw the light of day. As I’m probably not going to convince Helio to run a white bodied series just because I think it would look mega rad, the task of making one will involve a little bit of leg work and a lot of tearing things apart.

So why not just rip the body off an ocean and spray it white? The main obstacle is the soft touch coat that covers the body already. Soft touch is a spray on plastic paint that gives your ocean’s body that smooth feeling that everyone notices when they first grab the device. It feels awesome, but it makes color modding the device tough - most paints just wont stick to it. If they do, they tend to look sort of diseased after drying.

The first challenge is getting an Ocean body sans soft touch. As I see it, there are two options here:

1) Strip the paint:

I could attempt to strip an Ocean body of it’s soft touch coat. However, I have no idea if this is even possible. As it’s really just a sort of spray on plastic, how could I remove the soft touch coat without eating at the body?

Advantages: Cheap
Disadvantages: Probably wont work, and might just ruin the body.

2) Get a body that hasn’t been sprayed with soft touch yet

This one’s a bit daunting, but it’s probably the best possible route. Somewhere in the magical land that is the Pantech factory, theres gotta be a point in the manufacturing process where the bodies are molded but not yet sprayed with soft touch.

These untouched shells, these perfect canvases - they’re out there, half way around the world. The question is whether or not I’d be able to get one. I’d gladly pay for one, if that were an option. Folks from Helio read this blog all the time - any of them reading this and happen to know the right person at Pantech? Gimme a shout.

Advantages: Takes a lot of the “This will probably end up really ugly” factor out of the process.
Disadvantages: Kind of crazy.

There are probably a number of other options (fabricating my own body, for example.) that I haven’t covered here. If you have any ideas, be sure to leave a comment.

The Process:

1. Somehow, end up with an Ocean body without the soft touch paint.
2. Determine the best way to color the body. Perhaps the guys from Colorware will be down for the project? If all else fails, spray paint.
3. Tear apart the Ocean, removing its original body
4. Install super awesome white body
5. Triumphantly thrust Ocean above my head while victory theme plays

One way or another, my Ocean’s going white. I’ll post updates (and pictures) as they go down.