Our friend Clive kindly lent me his Hot Air Gun to heat the vinyl lettering up so that it peels off easier, this is it working -
It's not a good idea to hold the gun there too long, as you could damage the paintwork, after all these guns are designed to remove paint, so I left it heating the plastic up just until it started bubbling slightly, then got a nail under the corner of the letter (the vinyl lettering is very hot at this point, so go careful if you are doing the same thing, the worst bit is when the letter curls up and sticks to your finger with very hot glue on it !), and pulled the vinyl away. Sometimes this left some glue, sometimes it came cleanly away. I found putting some WD40 on a cloth and rubbing where the glue was got the majority of it off.
So this is after I got a lot of the lettering off. I left 'Ambulance' on there intentionally, as it is still registered as an Ambulance, but may take that off in the near future and either put Animal Ambulance at the top or just leave it off, just until I'm ready to re-register it as a motorhome.
You can see the low profile of the awning to the body in this photo too.
Seeing how the lettering comes off, I'm now starting to get slightly worried about the checker graphics, I can see those being a pain to remove !
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Gloucester
I copied your method but found it not necessary to wait until the vinyl bubbles, better to get it when it is just hot, and maybe even a hairdryer would have done it. The green and yellow chequers were easy; the yellow diagonals were OK, but the red was diabolical,being thinner and with a different backing, so it breaks up into small bits, and leaves a lot of glue behind. The best solvents I have tried so far to remove this are acetone or brake fluid but it is a major and very time consuming job with a lot of elbow grease needed too. There must be a better solution!??
ReplyDeleteHi Graeme, yours doesnt soundso baked on lol, Mine refused to come off unless it was bubbling. The stuff on the bonnet is really hard, and yes the red stuff is THE WORST ! The only thing I found that quickly got rid of the glue was the brake cleaner, thankfully it smells quite nice too ! I've not attempted any more on mine yet, waiting for warmer weather when it will hopefully be easier.
DeleteHave you got any pics or a blog of yours ?