Last Ride

Hey all, just wondering if there was an effective way to remove the side moldings without damaging the paint. Would there be any negative effects of performing such an operation? Thanks for your help!

97silverbullet

Heat them up with a hair dryer and work a bondo squeegee under one end. When you can grap a hold of it, carefully pull off the molding. The tape left behind will roll off with your fingers. Any left over adhesive can be removed with wax and grease remover.

KBlanke

I want to know the same thing, I thing my yellow Z06 would look much better without them. :yesnod:

Michaeljh3

I used dental floss and worked it in a sawing action to cut through the double sided tape. Then, I carefully used my finger to remove the tape from the car. Once all the tape was off, I polished and waxed.

AFVETTE

Used fishing line and some adhesive remover. Came off my 3.5 year old 99 very easy. The car looks so much sleeker. When I got home my wife even noticed and said "what happened to the woosh things on the side of your car"
Wives gotta love em. At least she noticed.

Tom

2kht

These are my notes from my bsm removal - sorry if they are too long:
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I washed the areas above and below the bsm to remove any dirt that might be hiding between the gap between the door and bsm. I figured I'd be moving the bsm up, down and sideways to remove it and I didn't want to scratch the door.

I used a standard hair dryer to warm up a 3 inch section of the long bsm starting at the rear of the door. This took about 10 minutes. Then I started moving the bsm vertically (parallel with the door) about 1/4" up and down. After a few minutes of this I was able to pull the bsm away from the door about 1/32". The glue on the double sided tape just stretches. I tried pulling some monofiliment fishing line through the glue (dental floss method). This was dificult and largely unsuccessfull because it is hard to hold the HOT bsm and pull the line through the glue - the line wants to dig into the soft bsm. I finally got an exacto knife and cut through the stretched glue very carefully. By this time the BSM was about 3/8" from the door so I had a pretty good gap. I cut about 1/4" of the glue and the bsm just started to pull off. I was very, very, very carefull with the knife I didn't want to cut the door :-). The long bsm on the driver's side was off in another 2 minutes. I only had to heat the first 3 inches of the long bsm. I was amazed at how much heat is produced by pulling the bsm off. The last 3 inches was just as hot as the 1st 3! After feeling how hot the bsm gets there is NO WAY I'd use a heat gun. I don't know what kind of glue is used but it reminds me of that stuff that you see in the Alien movies :-)

The short thick bsm in the front was very tough. They are so thick that they don't flex at all. To get these off I repeated the "heat-wiggle-heat-cuss" cycle for 45 minutes. You have to be very carefull not to just grab the short bsm and pull because there isn't bevel on the from of it and it looks like it's possible to gouge the clear coat just in front of the bsm if you pull it since it is short and thick and won't flex.

There was a lot of glue left on the doors. As much as 1/16" in places. I sprayed 3m general adhevise remover on the glue deposits. This did nothing :-(. I finally resorted to rolling my fingers back and forth across the glue vertically and sometimes from front to back to make the glue "roll up" This took about an hour per door. After the big deposit of tape/glue was removed I could see some clear "glue". To remove this I sprayed the 3m general adhesive remover on a rag and wiped it on the glue.

After I was done removing the glue I washed, clayed, and Zainoed the doors.

All in all it took me about 4 hours. I didn't realize how much work it was until I woke up Sunday morning with my hands and fingers killing me. They are still a little sore today.
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HTH