The majority of modern vehicles, cars and trucks are affixed with the manufacturer or car dealer badge. These badges are put in place as a marketing tactic to promote the dealership or manufacturer.
If you do not like their look or don’t want to give free promotion to the dealer, you can remove the badge from your vehicle. In this blog, we share some effective ways to remove the branding without leaving mark on your car.
Identify the Type of Branding
The first thing you need to do is to identify the type of badge used on your car. If it is an adhesive based badge, it will be easier to remove.
Badges that are welded or bolted on your car are more difficult to remove. Most high-end and luxury models have permanent badges that are securely welded onto the body or fixed with bolts.
Note here that we will share tips here on how to remove these badges and not on how to repair them. When you remove bolted badges from a vehicle, you will have to do some advanced body filling and body work to do a clean job. That part of auto detailing is not covered in this blog.
Removing Adhesive Stickers
If you want to remove branding stickers from your car’s body, you should do it early. If you leave the stickers on for months and years, they will become baked and permanently stick to the paint.
In this case, it will be impossible to remove them without causing the paint to peel a little bit as well.
If the sticker has not been on the vehicle for a long time, you could get lucky peel the sticker easily without trouble.
Here’s our step by step guide on removing sticker badges.
- First, gently heat up the sticker with a heat gun or blow dryer. Heating up the sticker makes it a little softer and easier to remove.
- Using a narrow plastic blade, gently peel and separate the edge of the sticker from the paint. You can also use a thin plastic card to peel it off.
- Place your thumb on the sticky side and two fingers over the surface. Press the sticker to your thumb and roll it slowly to allow the badge to stick to your thumb.
- If the sticker starts cracking, you will need to carefully peel it up again with the plastic razor blade. Keep the heat on it while doing so.
- After removing the badge, you may find a layer of adhesive or residue of the sticker on the body. Apply an OTC adhesive remover on the residue and gently spread it around with the help of your thumb. Leave it to react with the adhesive for a few minutes.
- Once the adhesive remover has had time to react with the sticker residue, rub it off gently with the help of a microfiber towel. Do not press the cloth against the body too hard.
- If you do not have an adhesive remover, you can try to peel the residue off with the plastic razor. In this case, make sure to be very careful or you might end up scratching the paint off.
- After the sticker and adhesive is complete removed, use a rubbing compound on a towel to buff out the area.
