Removing painted on Pinstripe? and Stick on stripe?

[silent_orchestra]

Ok, since my '80 Cutlass got a quick and somewhat painless butt f*cking by a Blazer I figure it's time to give her a new look.

I'm wondering how would I go about removing painted on striping? (on the rear quarters, and the trunk) I want to leave the stripes that run from the front of the car to just past the door.... I like those.

On the pass. side quarter the stripes were redone (in tape) because they were chipped. How do I go about removing the tape?

Or should I just let the body guys deal with it while it's at the shop anyway? wonder how much it would cost....

 

[Minion1186]

To remove them (from what I remember)heat the pinstripes up with a hairdryer and carefully start peeling them off,to cold and they'll rip and crack and if they're to hot they should shrivel up or something.Im not sure how to put them back on though.

 

[87GP]

The hair dryer/heat gun will work for the tape stripe. You can clean the left over glue with mineral spirits or a degreaser/wax remover. Mineral spirits works just about as good and is much cheaper.

The painted ones will be a bit tougher. You could try masking tape over the stripe and then yank it up quickly. Sometimes that will get some of it but if your paint isn't so good it could lift that too. Other choices would be rubbing it with a fine compound like 3M liquid perfect-it. I would lightly wet sand the stripe with 1500 or 2000 with soapy water and then lightly buff the area with the 3M. Sometimes you'll see the ghost stripe in the paint after you remove it due to swelling of the old paint from the bite of the stripe and even on the tape side due to fading.

 

[silent_orchestra]

Cool, I know the tape side is fairly easy, it's the painted side that worries me. I've heard of people using laquer thinner (what the striping guys use also) to remove stripes.... But I'm just not to sure if I'm willing to try that.

The paint is in good shape (the clear is getting a little thin for buffing though), I'll ask the guy at the body shop tomorow what he thinks about it.

 

[Blake442]

He'll probably tell you the same thing I will... Leave it alone.