I lettered a vehicle door with Arlon HP white, and realized that I had positioned the graphic wrong. I waited until the following day to remove the vinyl. I was having a heck of a time getting it off. It was coming off in little quarter inch pieces, and leaving all of the adhesive behind. I then tried a heat gun, and it actually made the situation worse! After about an hour, I finally got it off. I removed the adhesive using Rapid Remover. Even took 3 applications of Rapid to get off the adhesive. Then I noticed a ghost image left behind. After cleaning the area twice with Naptha, I finally got rid of the ghost image. Weird. Have they changed formulations or something?
Posted by Si Allen (Member # 420) on :
Was it a newly painted vehicle?
Posted by Bruce Evans (Member # 44) on :
Yea, definitely sounds like fresh paint. Arlon HP is performs the best for us when it comes to die-cut stuff.
Posted by bruce ward (Member # 1289) on :
sounds like oracals properties also, i miss arlon and its ease of ability to be removed later
Posted by Wayne Webb (Member # 1124) on :
I've been using Arlon HP for several years and haven't had the problem you mention. But I'll be watching for it.
Posted by Tim Whitcher (Member # 685) on :
No, it wasn't newly painted. Why would that cause this problem? It's like all of the elasticity of the vinyl was gone. The vinyl was white. It also had a yellow stripe that came off fine.
Posted by Bruce Evans (Member # 44) on :
We letter quite a bit of freshly painted buses. Every so often we screw up and have to remove something that was installed the same day it came out of paint. When we do the removal, it always leaves a ghost. The ghost eventually goes away, but it happens everytime. I've only have the vinyl removal troubles you speak of happen maybe twice and the paint was doing strange things. You could just have bad vinyl though.
Posted by Donna in BC (Member # 130) on :
Tim, I stripped body shop repairs for years and always had to do it on fresh paint. I too had the same issues when it was fresh. It's like the surface has extra adhesive type properties in it and everything goes wrong if you want to remove it again. You just don't and have to do it right the first time. The issues are totally typical of fresh paint.
Now that you've ruled that out, must just be a bad batch of vinyl if it's the only color that's doing it. Or could it be old stock?
