"Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue,
Ya poot da glue on da Volvo
and go BORK BORK BORK!"

I've been slicing/stabbing/ripping/pickin' the old adhesive foam tape off this piece of lower door trim molding for an hour. Progress: about six inches. Adhesive removers don't even begin to touch this stuff. Using the curvy tip of the knife blade on my Leatherman -- it's too easy to cut into the molding using a box cutter.

Fortunately, the moldings came off without leaving anything on the paint, and the Gorilla Snot glue the OE used to hold the flappy ends on came off easily too.

Oh and the gray dye from IPD looks great on the test piece.

pick. pick. pick. pick. pick. ouch. pick. pick. pick. pick. pick. ouch.

OK, hours later, I have one molding relatively free of atomic adhesive. One more to go.* The two on both front doors were coming loose, but the rest of it isn't going anywhere soon. I can dye the others in place, carefully, with a small sponge brush and the wicked-thick paper stock I snaffled from work jammed behind the molding to protect the paint. Might give the rocker panel molding a dose too seeing how OE used duct tape to hold the right-side rocker molding strip on instead of buying $5 worth of clips. Grr.

*Oh my hands and arms. I'm almost 50 and thanks to parent arthritis genes pretty much every joint from shoulders down is angry and ouchy right now.

God Bless Jim Henson. One of my absolute favorite Swedish Chef episodes entails him standing and looking at you and saying, "Vell, tonite ve make da coleslaw, here is da shotgun, and here ve have da cabbage, take a da cabbage and ve tossen der cabbage, and den ve shooten der cabbage vit der shotgun, and den ve have der coleslaw..." I'm still laughing 30 years later.
Is there any chance that one of those rubber eraser type units used for removing auto pinstriping would help? Other than that, 3M makes an adhesive remover that is pretty dandy. Good luck!

The eraser wheel would be great if there was stuff left on the paint, but the moldings came off clean, meaning all that tape is stuck to the plastic molding. I think an eraser wheel would damage the molding... but I might get one anyway to get rid of the pin stripe tape.

I wanted the 3M adhesive remover, but everyone around here just sells 3M adhesive, not the remover ;)

Oh and the one with Swedish Chef vs. the turtle is awesome!

I don't recall the S.C. vs. turtle episode, but I'll take a look. If you are in a jam for 3M Adhesive remover, and can't find it from a local jobber store, Griot's Garage sells it. Somewhere in the vicinity of $16.00 USD per spray can, shipping not included, of course. griotsgarage.com Bork Bork Bork!

The SC vs turtle is on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1KSaUEu_T4

Griot's is total car-dude porn. Someday I'll have a garage with a lift and stuff, but not today.

I bought an eraser wheel from the auto paint store for precisely this purpose. It is no magic bullet for cleaning up the trim. I hope it will do better cleaning the residue off the car itself, though.

john

Yea,verily. Once again, mankind has created some monsters that we are not capable of taming. As Art Benstein would say, "I tried my hand at Adhesives Technology classes in college, but I couldn't stick with it." Sorry about that one, Art.

In lieu of atomic-strength adhesive remover, I've found that cutting a diagonal slit in the old stuff every inch or so makes it a little easier.

Well, easier than "&$%@#*$ dadblangit!" which isn't saying much.