Dave N
05-05-2002, 09:13 PM
Last year I put some Trimbrite clear protective strips on my rocker panels to keep the rock chips down. I have since installed some running boards to keep the rocks from flying up and hitting my truck. Sooo, today I decided to take the trimbrite off of my rocker panels. The paint on newer Toyota tacomas is notoriously cheap, and I had horrible visions of peeling the paint off with the Trimbrite. These fears turned out to be needless, though, because although the Trimbrite was pretty hard to pull off, the paint stayed on.
Then I started looking at those "TRD Off-Road" stickers on my rear fenders. Hmmmm, I`d been thinking about taking them off for a while, so today seemed like as good a time as any. My truck had been sitting in the sun for a while, and they were pretty warm so I didn`t bother the use a blow-dryer to heat them up. I pulled one off without too much trouble, except that it kept coming off in little pieces (not one big nice sheet like the trimbrite). After I got it off, I took a can of 3M Adhesive Remover and rubbed the residue off. Here`s where things went really bad! After I got most of the residue off from the 1st decal, I noticed several little spots that weren`t coming off. When I looked closer, I realized that they were little spots where the sticker had pulled the paint off! The area is about 2" square, and has maybe 20 little dots of missing paint (the dots are about 2mm in diameter). The decal on the other side came off OK -- I don`t know why it did that on the one side.
I guess this can serve as a word of warning to anyone who is thinking about debadgeing...or anyone who is thinking about buying a Toyota truck. I`ve heard a LOT of people complain in the past couple of years about the crappy quality of Toyota truck paint.
I`ll probably touch up those "chips" and maybe put another decal on to cover it up.
The bright side is that I got the back half of my truck ABC`d, SMR`d and Blackfired today, and it looks awesome! I had Klasse on before, and the BF really looks better.
Then I started looking at those "TRD Off-Road" stickers on my rear fenders. Hmmmm, I`d been thinking about taking them off for a while, so today seemed like as good a time as any. My truck had been sitting in the sun for a while, and they were pretty warm so I didn`t bother the use a blow-dryer to heat them up. I pulled one off without too much trouble, except that it kept coming off in little pieces (not one big nice sheet like the trimbrite). After I got it off, I took a can of 3M Adhesive Remover and rubbed the residue off. Here`s where things went really bad! After I got most of the residue off from the 1st decal, I noticed several little spots that weren`t coming off. When I looked closer, I realized that they were little spots where the sticker had pulled the paint off! The area is about 2" square, and has maybe 20 little dots of missing paint (the dots are about 2mm in diameter). The decal on the other side came off OK -- I don`t know why it did that on the one side.
I guess this can serve as a word of warning to anyone who is thinking about debadgeing...or anyone who is thinking about buying a Toyota truck. I`ve heard a LOT of people complain in the past couple of years about the crappy quality of Toyota truck paint.
I`ll probably touch up those "chips" and maybe put another decal on to cover it up.
The bright side is that I got the back half of my truck ABC`d, SMR`d and Blackfired today, and it looks awesome! I had Klasse on before, and the BF really looks better.