I'm not sure if this has already been "discovered" or not, but I add it here in case someone hasn't heard of it.
I'm a chemist in my spare time and I have stumbled across this accidentally and on the first occasion thought it was just some bad glue. But it has happened twice now over a couple of years to two different cars.
The secret? Spray the glued area with Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner and leave for a couple of days to do the magic. I never bothered to monitor it the first time so I don't know if the reaction happened within a few days or longer. I'm not sure if it was within hours, but I will try again at a later date to see the optimum contact time.
I sprayed some on the firewall and front quarter panel of my beetle a fair while ago and only lifted the cover off it today to do some more work,
The glue gets affected by the caustic ingredients and becomes soft and flaky and looks like dried skin you get after a really bad case of sunburn and the subsequent peeling.
The photo attached shows a small area I peeled off in about 10 seconds using nothing more than my fingers. A piece of the skin (the brown stuff) is lying at the bottom of the photo. Some areas would need a soft scraper to help. The black bituminous area was also affected and came off too albeit with a bit of scraping with a plastic scraper.
On both my cars, the 50 year old paint underneath was TOTALLY unaffected by the oven cleaner and looked like it had just been applied. But you need to make your own mind up on the suitability of the paint you have underneath the carpet. I guess if your alternative is to use solvents and hard scrapers, I guess the paint will suffer some serious trauma anyway.
Remember the oven cleaner is caustic and will burn your skin and severely damage your eyes. Make sure you wear goggles when applying the spray.
Let me know if it works for you too. Remember this is not something you do quickly and won't help if your car needs to be to the paint shop in a couple of days. This is a job that can be done well in advance and really does not involve too much hard work.
viiking
viiking Officially Full-On Dubber
253 posts · joined May 2012 ·
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