De-stickering the "Flying Log"

3 weeks on from the Round Britain Run it's time to get things back to normal so I decided to remove the rally stickers and plaques from the Flying Log. A few of the entrants have had issues this year with the stickers taking the paint off the car when removing. The paint on the "Log" is not brilliant to say the least with quite a bit of "rattle can" paintwork so if any car was going to suffer with the paint coming off  it would be the Log, however with a few precautions and a bit of care I had no issue with the proper rally stickers which are designed to be easily removable with low tack adhesive,

The most important thing is preparation before fitting the stickers. I cleaned the areas thoroughly and then applied several coats of wax polish as protection. I also fitted the stickers as per the instructions using a layer of soapy water on the doors before applying the stickers.

The stickers were in place about a month and stayed on with no problems,

Forward a month to today and it was time to remove them. First bit of preparation was to nick my daughter's hair drier! I then warmed the sticker all over and then put some heat on the corner and started peeling whilst keeping heat on the area being peeled.

Warming the sticker

Pic

Peeling, keeping heat on the area being peeled.

Once the stickers were removed a small amount of adhesive was left in place, a bit of lateral thinking was used here. Adhesive is sticky and greasy, just like burnt on cooking fat, so I used some kitchen cleaner to remove the residue!

Some adhesive left on the door.

Kitchen Cleaner removed the reside adhesive.

I then T Cut and polished the doors where the stickers had been, no-one would know they had been there.

T Cut and polished after the Sticker was removed

The only area where the paint was marked was not from the official stickers,. Where I'd taped one of the rally plaques to the bonnet some moisture had got behind and marked the paint. The bonnet on the log has really dodgy paint anyway and a re-spray of the bonnet is on the list of winter jobs to do so no worries!

Damaged paint on the bonnet