Truck Looks Great I have the same ventvisors you had when you recieved your truck from the dealer. I have wanted to replace with window channel sytle but undecided on how to remove the adhesive safely from the door frame. Can you tell me what you used and any do's and don'ts you ran into TIA

Rob

 

Mike,

Thanks for the info on www.paintscratch.com Question tho, do I really have to have a clear one? Will the paint not adhere correctly to a smoke colored one?

Please advise.

Thanks

Jag

 

Willfulone,
Not sure if you are speaking of the actual console or the stealth sub enclosure, but my center console came with the trim package on my truck (I have the captain's chairs). That box underneath the dash is the Clarion stealth sub enclosure.

Jag,
I'm sure paint will stick well to the smoke colored deflector, but when you paint the smoked deflector from the back you will hardly be able to see the paint color through it. If you want to have it match the truck and be durable, you need to get a clear deflector and only paint the back side (the side that faces the hood). The idea is to keep the front side unpainted so when debris hit the deflector they only hit the clear front plastic, not the paint. You need clear because, as stated before, you are painting the back side (side facing the hood) and looking through the plastic to your paint. HTH.

Rob,
In order to remove my stock ventvisors I waited for a pretty warm day (which shouldn't be a problem now) and used a bottle of citrus degreaser/label remover. I simply sprayed a bit of the label remover along the upper channel of the ventvisor so that capillary action would make it flow all along the adhesive strip. I then waited about 5 minutes for the remover to work on the adhesive and began to pull the deflector off the door. Some parts of the adhesive backing absorbed a lot of the fluid and they came up easy, other parts were a little tougher. I just sprayed a bit more fluid where necessary and kept on pulling on the visor. You'll need to pull quite hard, but I found that the really tough adhesive would stick to the door and not the visor, so you shouldn't need to worry about damaging the paint. I damaged my stock visors pulling them off (bent/stressed the plastic), so if you want to retain them you may want to try another method...I didn't care to keep mine. Now, when you finally get the visor off there will be bits of tape residue along the door panel. Just go back and saturate the remaining tape with the label remover and remove it. Once all the tape is removed, follow up by cleaning the label remover residue off your door with either soap and water or glass cleaner. Doing things this way, it took me about 30 minutes per side (both front and back visors).

The only other thing I could think of doing is using the fishing line method wherein you take a length of fishing line and basically run it behind the visor in a sawing action (always keeping tension on the line AWAY from the door panel) to effectively "slice" the visor away from the door (people remove badges this way). Again, do this on a warm day. Once the visor is off, remove the tape residue with label remover just like with the other method. I'd imagine that the fishing line method would be quicker and would allow you to retain the old visors since you wouldn't be yanking them in all different directions. An added bonus, there would be virtually no chance of pulling a huge chunk of paint off the door which, admittedly, you technically might do if you use the method I did . The reason I didn't use the fishing line method is simply because I didnt have any around. In hindsight, it is probably smarter to use fishing line. In the end, my paint was fine and it all worked out. It really is up to you. HTH.

-Mike