Hybridtheory

Hi all,

After some 'intense' googling, I didnt find much info on removing car bra's. Well I did, but they all had the same techniques.. I guess my technique is the same.

I just bought a 2000 Ti Model, and it had a really badly stuck on car bra thingy above the headlights which was getting cracked, and gone all hard.

I tried using the mrs's hair drier, but it took too long, so i borrowed my mates heat gun.. only had 2 settings - 60 and 600 deg celsius.. needless to say the highest setting melted some of the cover(NOT GOOD!!).

I bought goo off which seemed really harsh - tested in 1 small spot and it just melted the goo and plastic off - might sound good but i figured it might not be too good for the pain

I also picked up some of this stuff called De-Solv-it. Its citrus based... magic!!!!!!!!

Here's what I did:

1) Set the heat gun to 60 deg celsius and heated up a small section - 2-3 inch at a time
2) Quickly scraped the cover off CAREFULLY - had to do this a few times to scrap the glue as well
3) While the paint was hot - I poured a few drops of the Desolvit on it and rubbed it in with my fingers
4) Used a soft terry cloth to gently rub the goo off - Yes, it just came off!! I was just amazed at how easy it was

I did steps 1-4 until the entire thing was off. I quickly then washed the area off with just some regular car wash, an extra concentrated mixture though and let it sit for a while.

After it was dry, I just polished it using some Meguire's Swirlx.

That's it!

You CAN just melt the **** off, but the problem is that getting rid of the glue will be a real pain, as it would be glue and plastic mixed together, which I found was really hard. I had to let the desolvit stuff soak for about 10 mins before it came off(it did in the end tho)

The entire process took me about 2-3 hours, mainly cos I was a bit lazy and getting pissed off at it thinking who the **** would put this **** on.

Goo off would have probably worked better, but I was really sceptical so decided against it. Besides the desolvit smelt MUCH better

Anywho, here are the pics:

Before:





After:





Thanks to my tools and De-Solv-it: