How to remove vinyl graphics
Hands down, removing vinyl graphic is THE worst job in sign-making. Having said that, it is usually quite easy to remove vinyl graphics with a little heat from a heat-gun or hair dryer, read on…
HOW TO ‘DO-IT-YOURSELF’
Grab a heat gun or hair dryer and gently warm the bodywork on the vehicle by moving in a circular motion, don’t apply too much heat in one place for too long! The gentle warming will soften the adhesive and the material and should make the job much easier, If you can do this indoors, all the better.
When the panel is warm to the touch, catch a corner and gently peel the vinyl away. The material will normally stretch slightly but should come away in one piece, the removed vinyl won’t be re-suable.
You can remove vinyl graphics without heat but you’ll tend to find if it is cold the vinyl will chip and come off in tiny pieces, we find a bit of heat helps.
When the vinyl’s off, use glue and tar remover if the surface is a little sticky, and when the glues gone finally wipe over with some IPA or similar to degrease the panels.
Depending how long the graphics have been on, you may find the paintwork underneath is in slightly better condition where it has been protected, you may see a slight ghost of where the graphics were The ghosting can be polished away normally, this is not a service we provide though.
GETTING US TO DO IT
We can remove vinyl graphics for you of course, we charge £60+VAT per hour pro rata (price updated October 2021) for this service as outlined above, as part of the process we clean any old glue so that the van is ready to have new graphics installed.
For most vehicles the process is normally quite straight forward, but it is hard to gauge how long the process will take and therefore how much it will cost for a given vehicle.
If you’re concerned it’ll be expensive for your vehicle, we recommend booking it in for an hour, we’ll calculate how much material we can remove in that hour, then use that info to estimate the time for the rest of the project, we will charge for the amount of time it takes though regardless of the estimate. Talk to us.
WHEN IT’S BAD…
A little clip below from a job we did recently. This material had been on this little van for about 5 years, you can see how it breaks and comes off in tiny pieces – it took us 33 man hours to remove a wide strip from around the bottom of this Citroen Berlingo… it’s not normally this bad.