When people restore an old truck, such as a F150, often it needs a lot of work done to it. We find that some of the older restoration jobs do have decals on them.
As they are older vehicles, the decals are even older. Often baked on for some 15 years (as a recent customer told us).
For jobs like these, we recommend the Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Blade is not suitable due to not being strong enough to remove such an old decal. Metal Razor blades can work, though due to the surface size of the blade, take far too long and there is a good chance of cutting yourself (due to the pressure that needs to be applied).
So for car or truck restoration jobs that have very old, baked on and hard to remove decals (stickers) we recommend the Wonder Wheel.
P.S – if there is any residue or adhesive that needs to be removed, we recommend a Citrus degreaser. This won’t damage the surface and is great for removing and goo or adhesive. Auto-centres stock this product and some supermarkets. It costs $5 – 10 / bottle. One bottle will do most jobs
I love cycling and recently purchased a new bike. My new bike is a Norco (Canadian bike) and is a lovely ride. My prior bike wasn’t as good and had a few unsightly decals (stickers) that needed removing.
With my experience in removing decals, I thought removing a decal from a bike would be easy. I was wrong.
Some bicycles (and motor bikes) have decals installed, then a lacquer / polish / varnish applied on top of it. What this means is the decal is sealed under the lacquer and it can not be removed off using a product like the Wonder Blade.
In this case you need to break / slice the lacquer so you can get to the decal, then peel the decal off (I used the Wonder Blade as it’s plastic so would scratch the painted surface – the Wonder Wheel is not suitable here).
Once the decal had been removed, I reapplied some lacquer to seal the surface. Often bicycles or petrol tanks (on motor bikes) use a lacquer to make the surface more shiny and also to seal the surface to avoid rust.
If you need to remove a decal from a bicycle or motor bike petrol tank that has a varnish or lacquer applied, then hopefully this insight has helped.
Every year, the government requires your car to have its registration up to date. What this means if you have to remove your old registration sticker and put on the new one.
The rego sticker usually goes in the top left hand corner of the windscreen.
In the past, this is a real pain to remove as the most common option was to use a metal razor blade and slowly attempt to remove the rego sticker. The problem with this is it usually on took off small chunks and took ages to remove or you ended up cutting yourself when the blade slipped.
The good news is now there is a product that makes it easy to remove the registration sticker. It’s the Wonder Blade that is made from plastic. The great part is that it easily gets under the sticker, making it possible to remove in one go. Also being made of plastic you can’t cut yourself.
So if you are looking for a way take off or remove the rego sticker, then I recommend the plastic Wonder Blade
A common question I receive is from new Boat owners who want to remove the old decal from the side of the boat….
Most Boats are made from fiberglass so you have to be careful not to damage the surface. Hence using metal razor blades is not an option as fiberglass is easily damaged.
We have had several customers order the Wonder Wheel to remove boat decals as the soft rubber wheel doesn’t damage the surface. However, one customer said a small brown mark was left on the haul as he used too much pressure. The mark was removed by rubbing on some cutting polish.
Some people have used the plastic razor blade, though normal Boat stickers are quite old and baked on firmly. This means you need a product that wears away the decal, rather than peeling it off. We find that once decals are on the surface for more than 3 – 5 years, that don’t really peel off. Hence you need a product that wears it away – we suggest the Wonder Wheel
After the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) I noticed an increase in small businesses going out of business – never a good thing.
The good thing now, almost 2.5 years later is that these small businesses are re-opening and a lot doing really well.
What this does mean is shop owners need to remove the old advertising and marketing stickers from the shop windows. As a lot of the advertising is on glass, then you can you metal razor blades to remove the decals. (Though please be careful as they are very sharp and easy to cut yourself).
For other areas in your business that need decals removed such as on the front counter, walls or wooden areas, we don’t recommend the metal razor blade – it’s just too easy to scratch and damage the surface.
For these area’s we recommend:
1) Wooden areas or walls with wall paper: Wonder Blade (the blade is made of plastic so won’t damage the surface)
2) Front counter or large window areas: Wonder Wheel (it’s made of soft rubber and really takes of the decal or sticker quickly. Note: please always test in small section first to test how the surface re-acts)
I look forward to seeing more of these businesses continue to grow and we always welcome your feedback.
Have you or maybe a friend, returned to your car and a big thick warning sticker is plastered across the car window?
These stickers are usually atleast 8 x 10 inches and made of very thick sticker material and stuck on with lots of glue. (the reason they do this is so it’s really hard to remove)
This happened to a friend of mine when they parked overnight in a parking lot. The owners did not have the authority to give a parking fine, so they stick a really big sticker on the passenger window. The sticker said they were not allowed to park there overnight.
These stickers are not your normal type of sticker. They use a different compound which is thicker (similar to reflective stickers) and hence hard to remove. Using any sort of blade (if metal if on the glass) is very slow work and a heat gun is also slow due to the thickness of the material.
We recommend the Wonder Wheel as this will wear away the sticker. It does take longer than a normal decal, though the Wonder Wheel will remove the decal.
The downside of these big stickers is also the amount of glue or adhesive they use. Usually a Wonder Wheel removes a lot of the adhesive though in this case we recommend a citrus degreaser. These can be bought from your local supermarket and the bonus is they leave a pleasant lemon smell.
It’s only 2 days until Christmas and yesterday afternoon I caught a bus that was covered in Christmas decorations.
The whole inside of the bus was covered in tinsel, the driver a Santa’s hat on and most of the outside of the bus was covered in Christmas decorations… It looked pretty cool.However, even being caught up in the Christmas spirit, my first thought was whether the bus driver who had decorated his bus, knew how he would remove all those decals!
Anyway, I got speaking to the driver and being curious, brought up the question about the stickers and how they were going to be removed. He thought the Bus cleaning department would take care of it and hadn’t given it much thought. After I explained how much effort could be involved in removing these decals (and lost fingers nail if they didnt have the right tools) he started to loss some of his Christmas jeer.
So being Christmas, I thought I would help him out and plan on sending a free Wonder Wheel and Blade to the cleaning guys so come post 25 December, they will have an easy job in removing the decals
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
It seems that pretty much all removalist trucks have big decals or advertising stickers on the side of the truck.
When these trucks are sold (and yes a few of them do get sold and not driven until they stop) they sometimes need the decals removed.
From experience, most of these decals have been on the side of the trucks for years. Often more than 10 years and baked on very hard.
The Wonder Wheel works well in removing these and is suited to the job as most of the time these decals are quite large.
The common outcome is the decal is removed (and the adhesive if use a common degreaser) though there is often a ‘shadow’ left around the decal. This is not a shadow. It’s where the paint around the decal has faded and the paint under the decal still looks fresh.
So if you buy and old truck and remove a decal, there maybe a slight ‘shadow’ left on the side of the truck
This week I received an email from a customer who had removed a decal using the Wonder Wheel from the side of a car. The Wheel took off the decal fine, though it appeared that a fine film was left on the surface (and it is not glue or adhesive)…..
I have not seen the film layer though from experience, this occurs when an old decal is removed. What can happen (and very rarely) is that over time, usually 5+ years, the paint on application surface (e.g. car door, plane wing, side of truck or train etc) can fade slightly. This maybe only a very slight fading of the painted surface, though as the paint where the decal was, hasn’t faded, then it can like a different colour; or some may say it appears like a layer of film.
For this situation, an option is to polish the area around where the decal was to bring improve the surface shine. This will reduce any difference in colours
Regards,
Peter
This morning I received a call from a customer who purchased a Wonder Blade and Wheel – I had clarify that the Wonder Blades are double edged (i.e. reversable).
Anyway, I did not realise until I finished the phone call, that most car detailers and spray painters need to remove pinstriping from cars. When a car comes in for a new colour, respray or new pinstrips (decals) need to be added, the prior pinstrips need to be taken off.
This chap was very happy with the product because he could use the Wonder Wheel for big pinstrips jobs and also most of the adhesive was also removed. He thought the Wonder Wheel was much better at removing decals (especially baked on or old decals), though he thought the plastic Wonder blade would be good for smaller areas such as windows, rear view and side mirrors or more delicate areas where pinstrips and stickers had to be removed.
So he was happy and know I know a lot more about the pin striping business
Follow us on