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My truck is a Roll-A-Long edition that was sold new from the dealer with the custom paint and all the aftermarket accessories already installed. This truck was literally covered with painted on pin stripes from Roll-A-Long. They were everywhere and in very poor condition with many areas missing and all of it discolored and faded. I am in the process of trying to "restore" the abused original finish to its maximum potential and it would have been very hard to polish around all the stripes. So, I removed almost all of them and kept a couple areas that were in decent shape.
The guy that painted the stripes had put a business card sticker on the door jam of the truck. So, I called him and he swore by using oven cleaner to remove them. A Goggle search also resulted in a lot of oven cleaner suggestions as well. I took the truck to an auto body supply store and they recommended lacquer thinner. I tried the lacquer thinner and it worked, but was really slow and ran the risk of damaging the clear if left on too long. M105 with a cutting pad did a pretty good job of getting a lot of it off too, but not all. None of these seemed to be very good options.
Then a month or so ago the block wall around my back yard was tagged with graffiti. During the search for a way to remove it I found a company in Minneapolis called Graffiti Solutions that markets graffiti removal products. Turns out they have a product called Smooth MAX that is designed to remove graffiti paint from vehicle finishes without damaging the paint.
(A picture of the bottle is in my gallery. Can't get it to show up here.)
The bell dinged and the lights came on and I gave them a call. They said they had never considered that product for removing pin stripes, but said it should work fine. I ordered a quart of Smooth MAX at $16 for the truck (and a quart of Elephant Snot for the wall - worked great!).The Smooth MAX is a tan colored gel that has the consistency of pudding and a very mild smell. To ensure safety of the clear coat, I applied a small amount to the clear coat, in an out of the way spot, and let it sit for 20-30 minutes. I did this with both the Ford factory applied green paint as well as the some of the Roll-A-Long applied silver paint. All was fine after that time and it wiped right off without any damage to the clear.
Next up was to try it on the stripes. I applied a small amount with a cue tip to a stripe.
I was expecting to have to let it sit for a while to soften the paint, but it was basically instant that the plastic razor blade scraped the stripe away.
I would think this product should work great on overspray as well. I would be inclined to try in on cars that have run over wet paint stripes on the roadway too. One thing to keep in mind is that some pin stripes never really go away. They just change color to become ghost stripes if your paint is badly faded.
Shawn
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