My Mark came with these nasty white and silver pinstripes. The worst was on the spare tire hump, where pieces had been rubbed off from people closing the trunk. I was washing it today, and decided to take care of it once and for all.
I came up with a technique for getting them off (mine were stickers, not painted on) that worked quite nicely. I cleaned the area around them well to remove any grit, then soaked it with spray-on bug & tar remover. This was to soften up the adhesive, and to lubricate the paint so it wouldn't get scratched. I then took a CD and used the edge to scrape the stripes off. I figured it would be rigid/sharp enough to be a good scraper, but not to the point that it would harm the paint. Fortunately for me, I was right. It pretty much came off with one continuous swipe, I didn't have to keep scraping at it. After removing the stripe itself I sprayed the remaining adhesive with more bug/tar remover, and scraped again. That got rid of 95% of the gunk. I then put on a coat of wax and buffed out the very few remaining bits of adhesive that were still on there.
If you look closely in direct sunlight you can see an extremely slight depression where it looks like the pinstripes sunk into the paint (they were applied before it completely cured, I guess), but you'd never notice unless you were specifically looking for it. My technique did absolutely no damage whatsoever to the finish, and the Mark looks MUCH better now. I'll post pics when I get a chance.
Just thought I'd share my technique in case anyone else wants to get rid of theirs. I've also heard that body shops will remove them with a pencil eraser-like substance attached to a drill...but that costs money!
I came up with a technique for getting them off (mine were stickers, not painted on) that worked quite nicely. I cleaned the area around them well to remove any grit, then soaked it with spray-on bug & tar remover. This was to soften up the adhesive, and to lubricate the paint so it wouldn't get scratched. I then took a CD and used the edge to scrape the stripes off. I figured it would be rigid/sharp enough to be a good scraper, but not to the point that it would harm the paint. Fortunately for me, I was right. It pretty much came off with one continuous swipe, I didn't have to keep scraping at it. After removing the stripe itself I sprayed the remaining adhesive with more bug/tar remover, and scraped again. That got rid of 95% of the gunk. I then put on a coat of wax and buffed out the very few remaining bits of adhesive that were still on there.
If you look closely in direct sunlight you can see an extremely slight depression where it looks like the pinstripes sunk into the paint (they were applied before it completely cured, I guess), but you'd never notice unless you were specifically looking for it. My technique did absolutely no damage whatsoever to the finish, and the Mark looks MUCH better now. I'll post pics when I get a chance.
Just thought I'd share my technique in case anyone else wants to get rid of theirs. I've also heard that body shops will remove them with a pencil eraser-like substance attached to a drill...but that costs money!