This has probably been covered before, but I can't seem to find the thred.
I'm in the process of prepping a set of fibre glass panels for a respray and need some advice. Being a race buggy, it's covered with large amounts of stickers/decals of one form or another - some of which have come off easily but left a residue, and some won't budge at all - also the front/bonnet has been covered with some form of protective clear film - with the stickers sandwiched between it and the body.
Any ideas on the best way to tackle this without damaging the paint too much ?
Cheers ... Kimbo
[ Edited on 5-7-2007 by Kimbo ]
5PL1TDCS10N 路
Hi Kim,
A steam kettle is usually good to remove decals but regarding the front/bonnet they might have sprayed some clear over the decals.
W馃檪
Kimbo 路
A steam kettle - never would've thought of that - thanks I'll give it a go.
Nah, it's not clear sprayed over the top, as it's covering a couple of small rivets holding on the backing plates for some bonnet pins, and you can see that it's a film of some form - but a good suggestion, none-the-less.
At the end of the day it's gonna get rubbed back and resprayed anyway, I just wanted to try and avoid having to do too much scrubbin' and rubbin'.
Cheers ... Kim
vw54 路
a hair dryer is the best for removing stickers then use some presol or wax n grease remover to take the glue off
Kimbo 路
Thanks VW - I'll have a go and see what happens
squizy 路
Rubbing alcohol will also remove the glue, but that will also dull your paint.
Kimbo 路
Thanks Squiz - making the paint dull's not a problem, as it's going to get resprayed anyway.
warb3 路
peel them off, use a heat gun as mentioned, use turps to get rid of the glue, metho, etc will just make the glue go sticky again once it evaporates. there is a product called a 'cameral wheel', its a rubber wheel that attaches to a powerdrill, you can also use one of those, call a sign supply company, its made by a company called 'blaster', its a bitch of a job stripping decals, esp old ones, have fun!.
Kimbo 路
Attacked the decals yesterday with a hairdryer and a little bit of stiff plastic as a scraper. The hairdryer worked really well at softening the glue, but it was still a bloody fiddly job, especially as there were lots of single letters - it seemed to take forever!
At the end of the day there were unfortunately mixed results, predominantly due to bad paint prep by the formed owner - in more than a few instances I was gently peeling the decals back there would be a sudden rip, and the decal would come away with varying layers of paint as well - good job I'm respraying the whole thing.
Strangely enough the area where the decals came away the cleanest was on the bonnet, which I thought had some kind of film over it. Turns out he'd sprayed, what appears to be, some clear-coat over the top of the tacky "flame" decals - I now have a high gloss bonnet, with low gloss flames - a fairly neat result, assuming I'd been going for that type of finsh.