I just bought a 2006 Astro Black Metallic Mini Cooper with checkered stripes on the hood and hatch.

Can I safely remove them without leaving marks or color differences in the paint? If so, what's the best method?

Thanks.

 

On an 06, especially a dark color, you may well see some difference in paint under those stripes. Be prepared to polish to make the exposed paint look like the protected paint, or be prepared to put on a new set of stripes.

Best way I've found to remove the stripes, first let the MINI sit in the sun for an hour or so. Then get a hair blow drier. Pull up a corner at the back end of the stripe. As you move the blow drier in medium heat setting back and forth, keeping the under side of the stripe hot, pull slowly and evenly from right to left.

I've had some stripes come off in two minutes, all in one piece. I've had striped come off in an hour, in about 80 pieces. Hope yours aren't brittle and still soft and supple so they will come off easily.

 

Good news: you can safely remove them by heating them up (leave car parked under sunlight + soak with Goo-Off from Walmart/Home Depot) and gently pealing them off. If you are lucky, the vinyl wont break and the stickers will peal off in one peace.

Bad new: you absolutely _will_ see the paint discoloration differences under the stripes. 7 years of paint protection (assuming paint hasn't been damaged) will reveal what your color looked like seven years ago. No amount of polishing or clay-ing will cover the paint decay. Nothing you can do about it, except put new stickers in the place of the old.

a

 

Not true at all. Will take the use of the right polishes and a machine buffer, you can absolutely make seven year old paint look like the protected paint agian.

 

CR, can you explain how polishing will change/restore the sun bleached color of paint to the original color without going thru the clear coat? I've seen this idea proclaimed a few times and just don't understand it. If you do have to remove the clear coat which I don't see any way around, I would prefer to either live with ghost stripes or replace the vinyl.

My '06 pure silver has ghost stripes but I do replace the vinyl when it gets all raggedy from suicidal bugs and road trash.

 

Perhaps if you are the Miracle Max ... or have some other way of polishing the 7 year old paint underneath the clear coat.
You _can_ polish the clear to the same level of clarity as (what hopefully is pristine) clearcoat under where stripes are currently, but the rate of fade of the base paint color will still show.


a

 

Why are you assuming the paint is so poor? Depends on where you live, if it's garage kept, how it's been maintained.

Me... I probably couldn't restore paint that is in the condition you describe. But a pro like Octane Guy sure could. You've seen his work, right?

 

Those are not OEM stripes, so no telling if they've been on long enough to create ghost stripes...or checkers as in this case.

 

That's a good point.

 

I recently took the white bonnet stripes off my 04 cooper S, I took her out for a drive in the sun and got the engine nice and warm, picked the corner of the strip up and peeled it straight off. No hairdryer of hot water needed. Just had a faint difference in colour so I got the T-cut out and gave the bonnet a quick polish finishing with the buffer and its perfect. I have heard nightmares from people saying that they have had to heat them up and issues with the lacquer coming off which almost put me off, maybe I was just lucky but Im glad I went for it.

 

Thanks for all the input.

As I wrote, I just bought the car a few months ago so I don't know how long the stripes have been on. But whoever did put them on, didn't do a very good job as they're not completely straight. So if I'm forced to put on new stripes, they might look even worse.

Right after purchase, I took it to BMW for maintenance and the car was never serviced with them. So I can't imagine that either of the first two owners took very good care of it.

Although I'd love to take the stripes off, I don't think I want to risk it at this point. I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Again, thanks.

 

When I read the post about the stripes not being OEM, I'd heard enough.

After getting home today, I started with the stripes on the hatch figuring if there was any bad discoloring, at least it was in the back of the car.

I couldn't believe my eyes when they started coming off ONE SQUARE AT A TIME! I can't believe that somebody actually put these things on individually. On the bonnet, one side even had John Cooper inlaid in the squares, and they were individual letters!

As far as I can see, there is no discoloring but some glue remains. I'll buy something to try to take care of that this weekend.

Even if some ghosting remains, I much prefer the car without the stripes. Even my wife said it looks better.

Too bad we have guests coming over. I can't wait to get it out on the road and see how much quicker it is without the stripes.

 

Try some Meguiar's Polishing Compound. After I bought my MINI in Sept. '09 I removed the OEM bonnet stripes and had some rally or Viper stripes installed.

I removed the aftermarket vinyl and de-striped my car ~1 month ago and even after removing the stripes and adhesive, I had a bit of ghosting. It wasn't paint fade (I have a touch of that after removing the OEM bonnet stripes) but was some remaining adhesive or residue.

It took some elbow grease but the Meguiar's removed the last hints of the custom stripes. All my work was done by hand, no mechanical (read: buffer) assistance.

 

Those checkers likely went on nice and easy by using a backing sheet, otherwise they'd be even more crooked. That must have taken several beers to get them all off, though.

 

Not really. 15 minutes and they were off. The car surfaces were fairly hot from the sun and drive home, though. Even the remaining glue residue came off with soap and water.

Hopefully I'll have time for a wax next weekend.