1hotdawg
+1y
The 3M Stripe Eraser, (the tool mentioned above) that goes on your drill, is the absolute best way. It's hard to crew up with it honestly. Use a regular drill that runs about 1200-1300 rpm and it'll take you about an hour to remove the decals like mines below. Just so you know, lol, there would have been no peeling of my decals possible, they were all cracked up.
Here's what I started with:
By geraldf at 2007-06-24
Now to try the first thing, I bought some goo gone, tried it by itself and a pocket knife lol. Realized this was gonna take forever I bought some straight razors. It worked, left the glue, but did remove sticker easier. Still I realized it would take forever! So called a buddy who is prepping his for paint and asked how he removed his, he said he used a pressure washer. I thought this was too good to be true! Tried it, it did a good job at removing the sticker plastic, but it too left the glue. But in 30 min we have all the stickers removed
Well, I had to get the glue removed so I tried a plethora of things:
Goo Gone stick remover, A spray stuff called Stick Shock, a lil gas just to try it...I was getting desperate. Called the paint shop, and asked him, he gave me some vinyl sticker remover. I didn't hardly work either. Between all this and using a plastic putty knife, I damaged a previously repainted area a bit. This was our worst spot, where even the power washer didn't take off the sticker, but it did remove a few spots of paint! So I've got to touch up this spot with some touch up paint for now:
I did use the wheel here too and it did not harm the paint anymore at all. All damage was from the PW and other chemicals...with the plastic putty knife. And btw, I DID NOT use the gas here. When I got the spray stuff from the paint shop, they warned me that gas and fuel type chemicals can soften the paint...funny thing, so did the spray he gave me
Anywho, once I bought my wheel for $13 I put it on the drill and went to work figuring out how to use it lol. Once I got it right, man she knocked it out just like erasing pencil off paper.
Once the glue and stickers were removed, of course the paint there was nice and white, while the rest of the truck had brown stain crap from road grime and stuff over the years. I mean really, if you'd see it up close you would have thought the truck had a yellowish antique white on it....more yellow brown than white Plus it had various spots where the black from the trim had left runs that an ordinary wash just would not remove. So I went back to the paint shop and asked for a good paint cleaner/restorer. I told him I wanted to do it by hand cuz I don't have a buffer. So he grabbed some stuff, we went out to the truck and he tried it on a small spot. To both our amazement the dirt came off rather easily.
So I bought the stuff, it's call "3M Finesse It II Metal Finishing. It's just like waxing...actually it is a "polishing wax" it says on the bottle But for another $15 this stuff worked wonders and I've got over half a bottle left
After all my trial and error, I suggest using the 3M Stripe Eraser or equivalent...mine was AES brand...they'll save you time and paint. I had no bubbling or anything like that, only prob I had was on the driver's door where the lower body "crease" is, I kinda rubbed the paint a lil much and almost to the bare metal...but most people won't notice it lol.
Here's my finished product after 3 days of being weathered again: