Shaved Emblems

So basically you are going to de-badge it?

Welcome to E-C!

I just took a look at the service DVD, and the front-door emblems are shown, but there's no real detail, so I can't tell if there's a location post on each emblem. The emblems are definitely mounted with double-sided tape, so the only way to reliably remove them is to use fishing line to "saw" through the tape. Do this slowly and away from the paint. Once the emblem is off, you can then carefully peel off the tape remnants with no damage to the paint. A cleaner wax will remove anything left on the paint.

I'm guessing that the emblems have no location posts, since the '08+ Mariner uses the same doors and has no emblems or emblem holes in the same location as the '08+ Escape and Tribute.

If you want to sell the emblems, I'll bet someone here will buy them.

Ok thanks JP. I've done the fishing line in the past, but had a friend suggest I use a spatula and either a blow dryer or heat gun. I've had luck using goo-gone in the past to clean off the last bit.

Stone - Yeah de-badging it. I've had some problems with random letters or whole badges just falling off cars here, so I figure I would take them off on my own terms. Plus I kind of like a nice clean look. FYI, I live in Phoenix.

I'd never use a heat gun myself, but that's just my .02. Same with goo-be-gone. I'm a bit of a paint freak.

I would be afraid of 2 things:

1. Bubbling your paint with a heat gun
2. goo-be-gone could eat through your clearcoat

Hair dryers don't get that hot, at least when it comes to bubbling paint. Goo Gone is harmless on auto paint where ever I have used it. I took the decal lettering off my tailgate with a hairdryer years ago (they were chipping), and used Goo Gone to clean up the surface. Then I used a cleaner polish and then a cleaner wax on the paint afterwards. I used Some Graffiti Gone (Or some other similar name) to remove paint overspray from my truck also. Took the offending droplets deposits off, left the original paint in great shape. No problem here with Goo Gone. :shrug:

Ok, so I was bored today while waiting for the holiday festivities to begin. I removed the back two badges, "Mazda" & "Tribute", with ease. However, I soon found when taking off the passenger side badge, there is at least 1 post close to the front, leading me to believe there are probably two.

So for now, my car will retain the side badges. I will take pictures once I have some time to wash it.