The previous owner of my car attached some kind of plastic fake woodgrain trim on the inside of the car around the dashboard, stereo, interior door handles, etc… It looks like its just glued on to the orignal plastic trim.
Is there a simple way to take it off? I assume I can just put a solvent on it or something to dissolve the glue, then just pull it off.
Anybody ever done this? Can you recommend a good solvent that will take off the glue without damaging the plastic? Any special precautions I need to know about?
Dissolving the adhesive would likely just make a huge mess. In any case, first test to verify that the solvent you’re using won’t also dissolve the plastic of your dashboard.
If the weather is cool enough, and you just pull on the piece, it will probably come entirely off and leave little residue. Try to be pulling on it in such a way that you don’t accidentally shatter the factory part that you’re trying to pull it away from.
Some wood dash kits call for the installer to use an adhesion promoter first. It looks like a magic marker, but it contains a solvent that eats into the factory plastic, so the new pieces will stick better. So you might find unsightly solvent lines on the factory parts after you remove the fake wood.
I would start by removing a couple of non-essential wood pieces and see how it looks under there before going further.
“Goo Gone” type products are the nukes of removal solvents. They will damage almost any type of soft plastic. And many hard plastics too.
Get thee to a WalMart type place and ask for “contact paper remover” and try that 2nd. (First I would try things like window cleaner and some corner peeling.)
At Chris Luongo’s suggestion, I tried–with some success–to pull of some of the smaller pieces. This left some residue, but the good news is it does not appear that they damaged the underlying plastic when they attached the fake woodgrain.
In any case, it looks like the body shop down the block from me will remove all of the trim for only about $100 (3 hours labor). Having pulled a few of the smaller pieces, I’m starting to think I don’t want to do this whole job myself. For one thing, I’m concerned with pulling off the larger pieces of the fake woodgrain. There is a very large piece that covers the trim surrounding the radio and instrument panel. I think it could be a real pain to take off.
For another, I’m a little concerned about damaging the plastic when I take off the adhesive.
But ftg thanks for the suggestion re: contact paper remover. I’ll get some of that today at the Home Depot and try it out before I go running to the body shop.
In case anybody was waiting with baited breath, with the counsel of my fellow Dopers, I have managed to take off most of the fake woodgrain in my car.
I used a hair dryer to heat up the pieces and then pull them off. Then I used contact paper remover (actually a product called “lift off”) to remove the adhesive.
The car looks a lot better, and I didn’t have to pay $100 to the body shop.