We are back again and this time we are working on a Ferrari California removing the Pininfarina rocker emblems. Emblem removal is one of the first mods tons of car enthusiasts do, to create a clean streamlined look. In this video we talk about how to safely remove most automotive emblems. Thanks again for watching!

Emblem Removal Steps:

1. Research the emblem you are trying to remove
2. From a safe distance heat up the adhesive under the emblem with a heat gun.
3. Take some fishing line and slide the line between the emblem and the paintwork, breaking the emblem free
4. Peal the emblem off the paint carefully
5. Heat up any leftover adhesive and lift off the paint
6. Take some adhesive remover / tar remover and clean off any left over adhesive residue.
7. Polish the paintwork to remove any mild scratching or ghosting left behind
8. Enjoy the new clean look

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Transcription:

00:00

Hey guys, it’s James. We’re back again. And I want to go over emblem removal today. I think it’s, it’s one process that every car guy wants to do their car at some point. It’s like the first mod that we ever do, right? We want to take off the old dealer emblem. We want to maybe take off the OEM emblem, create a cleaner look. I think it’s right. I needed to do it at one point. I think everybody wants to do it. So I wanted to kind of create an easy, super simple step by step process on how to take off emblems from a car without damaging the paint, without damaging the envelope, all that stuff. So we’re working on a 2011 Ferrari, California. We have, we’re actually prep preparing this rocker panel for, for clear bra and we want to take this emblem off, create a much more a cleaner, clear bra installation, not have a cut around. So it’s like perfect example where you got to take this emblem off, perfect time to shoot a video on it. So the first thing we do, how do we approach it? First thing we do is we have a heat gun.

01:05

And we want to just test it out a little bit first. Make sure we’re, we’re okay. And we go right into lightly heating up the emblem just a little bit. We don’t want to obviously overheat

01:19

Anything. You don’t want to overheat the paint. We don’t want to overheat melt and emblem, anything like that, especially an expensive one like this. Our goal is to basically loosen the double sided tape that’s underneath opposite side of the emblem. I would say most emblems on modern cars are double sided tape. And they’re super easy to remove. There are examples where there’s two prongs clips that hold them in. So it’s just something to look out for. I would always recommend doing a little bit of homework before you approach it just to make sure it’s, you don’t have one of those emblems where, you know, it should be double sided tape, but instead you have prongs plus double sided tape, all that kind of stuff. So just always do your homework before you approach it and double check. So after we have kind of loosened up that adhesive a little bit we go right into our fishing line. So we grab a little bit of fishing line. We come in here, let’s get this going

02:18

And let’s see, that’s this.

02:22

Okay, we come in here and what I do is I basically wrap two fingers around the fishing line to kind of create some nice leverage there. And then I pick one side of the emblem and I basically get that fishing line flush to the body of the car and slowly start to kind of get in between the emblem and the paintwork and loosen that double sided tape. You know, I’m not going crazy, I’m not hammering on it. I’m not using a ton of, you know, force behind it. I just want to, I don’t want to bend the emblem. Another to look out for is as you start to peel away one half of the emblem, just be cognizant that some of the sharper points don’t by accident, you know, rub into the paint potentially scratch the paint work. There are some emblems that have really sharp points and as you lift away from one side, the other side might then gouge into the paint.

03:23

So you just want to be cognizant of that and as you go through it just do it in the safest way possible and just be, keep an eye on those areas. So we’re keep working at it a little bit. Go back and forth with it. This one’s pretty straight forward. It’s coming off super, super easy. So we’re getting to that that last little bit and pull it right off. Boom. You super easy app. Obviously you can see all the old double sided tape on there and we’re C w with what we’re left with, which is not that much leftover, which is awesome. So we, at this point we can do two things. I actually like to grab gloves for this point. And the reason I like to wear gloves is obviously we’re going to be using that a chemical to try to remove this.

04:11

So that’s the first reason to always glove up. But the first one is sometimes I like to test out to see if the remaining residue will roll off. And sometimes with, with a glove can kind of get like a nice roll to it and the adhesive didn’t kind of just slide right off, which is in this example, of course it doesn’t work. So then we go right into our chemical method. But it’s something I would just test out to see if it works first, especially if it’s a brand new car. The, if it’s a brand new car, emblems are going to be much easier to remove. The more they’re stuck onto paint work, the more the double sided tape has now kind of adhered to that clear coat. So to get this, the remaining adhesive off, we soak our microfibers towel and in this example we have Stoners Tarminator, 3m adhesive remover would be another great choice.

05:08

And what I do is I kind of just go over the, the remaining residue and I kind of just saturate it allowing that chemical to do the work. I haven’t really used any pressure yet at all. I’m just coming in here and lightly kind of going over it. Then I want to just bump up the pressure just a little bit. Again, I’m not going to go crazy. I’m not going to hammer on it because you know, I’m not trying to create a huge giant scratched mess that may then have to go clean up with polishing. So I’m coming in here again using mild pressure and you can see it slowly starting to go away, which is awesome, which is the whole point of it, right after this point I’ll do an isopropyl alcohol wipe down, remove the Tarminator residue. And then we can really see if there is a ghosting mark leftover from the envelope.

06:03

If there is a light polishing process is going to remedy that, right? We want to create a nice uniform finish and we don’t want basically an outline of where the emblem used to be. So we want to just grab, you know, our favorite compound polish combination. Do a little test spot or race that marring or ghosting mark and then boom, right? It’s, we’re back. We have that perfect uniform finish that we’re all laughter. I hope this helps. If you have any questions, comment below, be happy to answer them for you. Thanks for watching.