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 ]

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

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

a hair dryer is the best for removing stickers then use some presol or wax n grease remover to take the glue off

Thanks VW - I'll have a go and see what happens

Rubbing alcohol will also remove the glue, but that will also dull your paint.

Thanks Squiz - making the paint dull's not a problem, as it's going to get resprayed anyway.

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!.

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.

Still, it's done now, so out with the wet 'n dry

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Cheers ... Kimbo