[encantotom]

the 3m clear plastic shield on the front of our coach looks terrible. it has started to yellow and has dings in it.

we are putting a stainless trim piece across the front and newell strongly suggested to remove the mask at leas where the stainless strip goes. i had read online about how there is no easy way and many people ruin their paint doing it.

well today, darlene decided to take it off and of course she was right again and i was wrong. or at least too conservative.

working on it for late morning and all afternoon, she has about 1/4 to 1/3rd removed with no damage to the paint. i believe this coach is imron and very hard paint.

she is using a hair dryer and a heavy plastic chisel that steve bare had and scraping the shield off in strips with it and then using goo gone to remove the rest of the mask.

there is no easy way and i helped her some this afternoon. she hopes to have most of it done tomorrow. that will be some kinda record from what i have read about removing this stuff.

later

tom

[folivier]

Sounds like she is a force to be reckoned with
Put me down on her list....

[bikestuff]

Good job Tom! I don't think that I have that nasty mask on my bus. yay.

Tell us more about the stainless trim piece. Are you adding the piece that goes across the headlights? If so...you might want to think about adding LED driving lights while you are at it. That would be cool.

[encantotom]

yea, that piece that goes across the headlight and where the newell letters are. mine didnt have it like most did.

i can do led lights later if i choose to. we are at steve bares working on things.

will start the trek to iowa from missiouri thursday morning

tom

[Chester Stone]

Tom, I have a hand held shop heat gun that gets substantially hotter that a hair dryer. One of these should get the plastic hotter without hurting the paint, thus making things easier.

[encantotom]

yea i have one of those too, but it didnt do any better. and i didnt worry about getting the paint too hot.

i think the motto is....whatever works. it is alot of work no matter what

tom

[encantotom]

ok, we finished removing the 3m shield (or diamond shield) from the front. it was very time consuming and darlene had to goad me into helping her do it. it took us about 24 hours total between the two of us. it was not easy, but faster than i expected. we ended up with one bb size piece of paint that chipped off and i had touch up paint for it. the entire front looks like new now.

so elbow grease, steve bares special plastic chisel (plastic razor blade WOULD NOT) have done it. it takes LOTS of pressure and someone with a gentle heat. we used a hair dryer. i had tried a heat gun before and no real difference and i would be concerned on bubling the paint. we were lucky in that our coach has a nice high quality imron paint job so the paint is very tough.

the we used quite a few bottles of goo gone to get the residue off. so two steps. removal of the shield, then a long time to get the adhesive off.

I WOULD NEVER PUT THIS STUFF ON AGAIN. JUST MY OPINION.

then a nice wax job.

you will also see we added the stainless trim across the front with new NEWELL letters. the entire front looks very different now.

we chose to leave the diamond shield on below the stainless to catch rocks and it didnt look bad.

so you can look at the pictures and see the before and after.

steve has been a gracious host and we fixed and did a ton of things on the coach. he is an amazing dude.

and i have to grovel to darlene now since she was the one who did more work than i on the mask removal. and the one who convinced me to do it. thanks to steve for helping and providing all the gear and shade. steve also helped me put the stainless on after darlene prepped with with the trim tape and put the letters on. at the end i clear siliconed the gap between the stainless and the light holes and steve followed me and cleaned the silicone off the stainless. that way it seals the stainless and wont have water getting down to the trim tape.

tom

[folivier]

Really looks sharp!
Wow, that stainless trim makes a huge difference.
Did Missy make a couple new friends?

[Chester Stone]

Major improvement, and it looks like it just exited the Newell shop brand new.

[Fulltiming]

As usually, Darlene to the rescue. Terrific job, both of you.