On 2003MY XK8s and before there is a horizontal door trim running down the side of the car midway up the door. It was removed in 2004MY onwards cars. According to the parts lists I can see, this seems to have been glued on. Has anyone successfully removed these without damaging the paint work, or is it impossible without a respray? I really like the cleaner look of those later models without this strip down the sides (but not enough to end up doing major bodywork!). Any thoughts?

 

hi mate,friend of mine did just this on his xk8 with a hair dryer and thin peace strong wax string to run along the lenth of the trim as he slowly pulled the trim away as it is just stuck on by the way,then wipe the remander of the sticky tape left on the door if eny with sticky tape removerthere are meny products out there or a small amount of white spirits,bit of t,cut and polish and bobs ya uncle,wouldent do it to mine tho,i like the trim as it is.

 

+1

There's been several posts outlining the same procedure and I can't recall any have reported paint damage.

Graham

 

+2 that seems to be the prefered method.

 

+3
The only thing you may run into is if the car has ever been touched up. A lot of body shops will mask off the trim instead of removing it. Remove the small front trim first, that will give you a good indication oif its ever been repainted. I believe Rev Sam ran into that problem when he tried to remove his.

 

+1 on the heat gun> When I removed mine I used fishing line to cut the adhesive from the trim but softened it up with a heat gun along the way and then used "Goo B gone" to clean up the remaining glue. Fishing line had no affect on the paint and I could get very close to the car whihc had the added benefit of getting most of the glue off n the process.

You may want to take a very close lok to make sure no paint work has been done. If it has they might have used the trim as a stopping point and you cound end up re-installing the trim to cover up past sins.

Good luck

Barry