Removing Old Stripes

Thought I woul just update this as a point of reference for anyone interested...

So, I went to the Napa, and they had two kinds of wheels at their warehouse. One, was a conglomeration of small, thin rubber wheels, but that one was missing a piece in its packaging, so I wouldn't have been able to attach it to a drill. The second was a solid wheel, but was going to cost ALOT more.

The people at the store were lazy, and not helpful, so I just left.

Oriely's lists one on their website called the "tractor tire" but none of the local places carried one, so, I decided to borrow a friend's heat gun, and get to work.



Oh, my friends... If you decide to go this route, buckle down for the long haul.

It was an incredibly slow, painstaking process to remove the stripe with a heat gun and small scraper. I removed just as much painst as I did stripe, and it doesn't remove the glue left behind, only the vinyl itself, so you will have to sand the whole area down afterwards.

I finally got it done, but man, was it some work. Probably have about 6-8 hours total just in removing those stripes. Also, on the very end, at the very last bit of the rear quarter panel, the Heatgun died. Permanently.

Not really relevant, but I just thought I'd toss it in.


In retrospect, I might have gambled the money on the rubber wheel, but I don't really see how it could have taken these hellish things off.