Polishing over Vinyl Pinstripes

[bswombaugh]

I have a customer with a Custom Dodge Van that he wants the paint corrected. The van has a large amount of vinyl striping all over the entire vehicle. If I have to try to work around all of this by hand it is going to be extremely time consuming. I have polished cars in the past with small amounts of pinstripping and have never had any problems with damage by going right over them. My plan is to use a PC7424 with a 1 step polish such as D151. Based on your experiences; do you guys think that I can safely do this with a machine?

[Old Pirate]

You should tape over those areas that has the Vinyl Pinstripes as a insurance against any remover of them.

[Stokdgs]

Angelo is absolutely spot on !

If at all possible, get some 1/4" and 1/8" Painters Tape, and go over all the stripes.. They are covering all the paint between them anyway, so polishing on them is not really going to help...
They will benefit from the LSP and thats all you can do, in my experiences...

Better to protect them than to accidentally pull one end off...

Or you can be really careful with very light pressure going quickly over those areas...
Depending on how much paintwork is close to the stripes, this may or may not work.

If the paintwork is really scratched right up to the stripes, well, then this going to be more "detailed" work and it may take longer depending on all the paint/defects/product/machine/etc/factors ...
Good luck !
Dan F

[TRD_Power]

Another thing to consider doing in the future is getting a few coats of clear coat sprayed over them. I know it`s kind of a spendy idea, but it`s worth it in the long run. My dad did it to his Chevelle and never looked back. Good luck!

[TRD_Power]

Ah, it`s a customer`s van... That`ll teach me for speed reading.

[glen e]

Gloss stripes on my camaro, dawn wash, alcohol wipe and opti coat 2.0 - no polishing...

[Trouble]

As long as they are not matte you can polish over them. The only problem with that tho is a few days later you`ll have wax/polish residue stuck in the cracks if you don`t take the proper precautions

If you don`t polish in some form it`s going to look like someone forgot to polish them IMO

[Todd@RUPES]

Kind of a crap-shoot... I personally would just polish over them, maybe say a prayer first if that`s your thing... On the other hand, I probably just gave you really bad advice and you should tape over them...