Recently bought a 2014 Countryman and I want to debadge the rear hatch...question
 

Hey all!

I'm saying goodbye to my R53 after almost 200,000 miles. Bought a 2014 Countryman a couple weeks ago and I love the car however, I HATE the HUGE Countryman across the rear hatch.

I have no problems with debadging, a heat gun and floss will make it easy, however I am worried about ghosting around where the badge used to be. It's a red R60 so I am worried after three years of life it will have some ghosting. Does anyone have any experience with this?

I have a 2015 countryman and debadged it right away. Used a heat gun and some fishing line. Letters came off easy.

In your case... if there does so happened to be a bit of a shadow, simply buff out the area to blend in the colors and you'll be good.

Better yet, shoot me a text at 951 623 3140 and we can knock it out tomorrow morning! I'm in the LA area too.

Hold up on that. The ghosting is in the paint, not the clear coat. If you buff it out, you will have buffed away all the clear coat. There are tons of comments on this very thing in the bonnet stripe removal threads.

I beg to differ... I've had 3 r53s 1 being a British racing green with the hood stripes and once I removed the stripes I was able to see the paint fade and with some special pads on my torx rotary and some paint correction compounds I was able perfectly blend in the colors to the point where you couldn't even tell that the stripes were ever there. I've don't paint correction on many high end cars so I'm quite sure this emblem removal is a piece of cake.

To get past clear coat to paint enabling "the blend" do these compounds/pads remove the factory clear coat ?

I have slight ghosting from OEM Bonnet stripes and would love to remove them. That is, the paint UNDER where the stripes once were is darker, rest of the dark silver hood is faded since new.

That is correct... essentially what paint correct does is remove a thin layer of clear coat enabling the surface to be corrected whether it be scratches, swirl marks or paint discoloration, oxidation or fading.

Prior to doing a correction I evaluate the condition of the clear coat and measure the thickness to see how much I can remove and still be within an acceptable tolerance. It's not as easy as it sounds but with the right equipment and teqnique you'd be surprised what can be achieved.

I've done paint correction on many exotics as well as normal euro, Japanese and amaericsn cars and each paint is different. Mini paint i feel like is easy to work with and I've achieved great results.