PaulCT

so its a warm day and i figured i would take my ugly pin stripes off my car. i got a hair dryer and tried scraping wuth a credit card but it wont work. the stripes are definitly pained on, with a brus cause you can see the stroaks. what shoudl i use to scrape these off. anyone have any ideas?

PaulCT

please anyone

clee130

If they're painted on, you're SOL. Can't do anything other than get the whole car repainted. Not worth it to take off some pinstripes.

MistaPeerez

i think the pinstripes give it a clean look..leave those on

PaulCT

well, it really looks crappy with them on. i think its only the front that are pained on, and i scraped a little off. all im asking is how do you get them off. what else besides a hairdryer.

fisher01

iTrader: (1)

If there not painted on try some goo gone. I've used this to take off a dealer sticker on the car after we purchased it.

BiggD23

I looked into removing the pinstripes when I had my 2k. It was white and had a FUGLY black and grey pinstripe going down each side. I was told by several detail and customizing shops in my area that even if I did get the stripe off you would still be able to see the line where it used to be, so it was probably going to look worse afterwards than it did with the stripe. I guess certain colors are different, but that's what you have to worry about...the paint being a different shade under the stripe. Good luck.

sislen

I started removing my pinstripes last weekend. My car came with gold trim, (with gold pin stripes), so I'm in the process of replacing the gold emblems and the gold pin stripes.

I'm not finished removing mine, but they were definitely NOT painted on the surface. I used a hair dryer and my fingernails to scrape them off. I used Goo Gone to remove the residue. It looks fine.

If your pin stripes are painted on, it might be more work than it's worth to remove them.

Once you remove them, you are going to see grooves where you pulled out the pinstripes from the edge of the clearcoat. Normally pinstriping is added as a dealer option, so I would think it's unusual to have paint or clearcoat added over the pinstriping. Was your vehicle in an accident? If your vehicle has been in an accident, a body shop could have fixed the damaged metal and sprayed over your pinstripes with clearcoat.

PaulCT

no it was never in an accident, but it definitly seems like there is some coat over it because its not easy at all to take off. damn. mine is pebble beige with MAROON pin stripes

jcalabria

I own a sign shop and run into this all the time. This will sound very strange but painted stripes or lettering can USUALLY be removed with EZ-Off oven cleaner.

You must proceed with EXTREME CAUTION , at your own risk...

• Test the EZ-Off on your paint in an inconspicuous place. Most factory paint finishes are fairly resistant to the oven cleaner, but not all. All bets are off if the car has been repainted.

• Do a small area at a time and don't leave on any longer than necessary.

• As someone had mentioned, you may see a "shadow" of the stripes after they are removed... Its not because the paint was damaged by the stripes... it actually is because the stripes protected the paint and it will be pristine behind the stripes and not weathered like the rest of the paint. This can usually be minimized by polishing out the area.

You might want to check with a sign shop in your area... particularly if they specialize in hand lettering of vehicles. They should have some experience to know if/how the stripes can be removed safely.