Hi all,
So....I have a 2012 Mini Cooper Countryman that I just took possession of. It's in great shape with 31,000 miles on it. I spent the weekend cleaning and polishing it and of course found all the nicks in the paint.

I am not overly fond of the color. It's "red" but it's a weird orange-red. It is certainly not a standard red and matching accessories to it are hard. With the white roof and strips, it reminds me of a creamsicle ::

Anyway, I painted the mirror covers black to tone down some of the white and because they were badly nicked and scratched anyway. As I was working on it, the hood stripes revealed their age to me. They are faded, spotted and fraying. So......

I would like to remove them and replace them with black stripes to add more black to the car. At that point only the roof will be the off-putting (to me) white.

Any suggestions in this area? Is it difficult to do? Any recommendations for where to purchase new stripes? The current ones are on top of the clear coat so I am sure I can remove them. I would leave them off but I am sure the paint will be a different color under there so replacing them with new ones seems like the best plan.

I can't seem to attach pics but my gallery has pics

 

Hello! Welcome to NAM. The left black stripe is 51149807175 here and the right is 51149807176 here. Otherwise, www.mightystripes.com is a great source to purchase new stripes and they can do custom stripes as well. We have a DIY for stripe installs here for an R50/R53, but it should still be helpful to you.

There is a small yellow box above the quick reply that looks like it has a mountain and moon in it. Click that and you should be able to upload photos.

 

The URL for Mighty Stripes is missing the "y". http://mightystripes.com

As for removing them, you'll want to try heat. A hairdryer should heat it up enough to loosen them up w/o damaging the paint.

 

Oops! Thank you!

 

Da nadda.