Hey guys. Today I'm going to show you how to remove this rock protection film that GM puts on the C7 Corvette
This film, over time, collects a lot of the the road dirt. It discolors. It really looks horrible.
My car didn't come with skirts on it so I added these skirts.
So I'm at the point now where I can remove this rock protection because the skirts do the job that this film was doing.
I have a heat gun and I'm gonna show you how to remove this.
I'm not sure yet on the temperature we're gonna use but as I do this I'll let you know what that is.
And of course you can do this with any other car.
This is pretty thick, the protection that's on here. I would guess this is probably around...
...I don't know, six millimeters maybe eight millimeters? It's pretty thick. Let's get started.
So here's a close-up. You can see how horrible this looks.
It travels all the the way down to that point. About a third of the way to the door.
So now we're going to remove this.
I have a DeWalt heat gun here and it has a temperature on the top.
An up-and-down temperature gauge. I'm going to start with 700 degrees.
Then you have different speeds; fan speeds.
I'm gonna start to warm this up. Never allowed the gun to sit in one spot.
If you do that, you're gonna burn the paint.
Yeah this is pretty hot. I guess you want to be about six or eight inches away. Keep it moving.
Not hot enough yet. I'm just trying to get an edge started so I can start pulling it off.
There we go.
I have the gun set to 700 degrees Fahrenheit right now.
I can still touch the surface. It's warm. It's not very hot.
There you go, it's starting to pull off. You just keep heating it and working the area.
I'm gonna be happy to get rid of this.
It's not exactly the nicest stuff to look at.
You can see there's a glue residue that's staying there. I have some cleaner for that. I'll show you what to use.
So far, I've been doing this for about five minutes. You can see how fast this works.
As long as you have the right tools. Everything is about the tools.
You don't want to use anything metal.
They do have some plastic scrapers out there. If you wanted to, you could get that.
I'm not using anything except for my hands.
You can always tell when you get to an area where it's not hot because you get a lot of resistance.
So you just heat the area and then you just keep going. Pull more, see?
And don't worry: as long as you're not holding the heat gun in one spot,
to where it's gonna really heat up the paint, you shouldn't worry about pulling the paint off.
You don't want to keep your fingers in front of the heat gun.
That's a good way to burn your hand.
I'm controlling the amount of heat it's getting by how close I keep the heat gun to the surface.
All right. Now this nozzle is hot so you don't want to lay it down on a carpet or anything plastic in your garage.
Make sure that you put it so it stands up, like so.
If you lay it down behind you and you forget about it, a fire could start or melt a piece of plastic or something.
It has its own footing on this unit so you just put it on the floor like that.
Now we have all this glue that's on here. I have a fix for this and I'm gonna get that now.
Then you want to get a microfiber towel, which I'm also gonna get right now.
By the way, to remove this panel right here took me about ten minutes, not even 10 minutes.
That's how fast it goes. Removing this glue is gonna take longer, but let's see.
So I have this product here and it's called rapid remover. It's for adhesives.
For removing any type of adhesives or glues. It's perfect for this.
I also use this product to remove any type of road grease from my car. This stuff is amazing.
However, do not spill this stuff in your car by accident. You will never ever get rid of the smell.
I had done that. I put it in my trunk. It spilled in my BMW. I could not get rid of the smell. It's really horrible.
It's a fabulous product, but it has its drawbacks if you screw up.
Okay, so I'm just gonna put it on here. So the way this stuff works is:
the longer you leave it on here, the longer it's gonna work.
So what I like to do is I like to check the area. Some areas here I have a lot. Other areas it starts to come off pretty quickly.
Of course you're gonna have to wash your hands afterwards because you really don't want this stuff sitting on your hands for long.
So you kind of want to watch-it's starting to work already-how it's coming off.
Just leave it on there and just keep testing the area.
Until it's time to start wiping it off.
You might have to do it a couple of times. It's been on there for about two minutes now.
Yeah, it's coming off. So I'm just gonna give it another application. Lightly spray the area.
You don't want to spray this stuff on the car and walk away and then forget about it.
If you're applying this product, you want to stay with the car and you want to supervise what's happening as the product is working.
As it works, it starts to remove the adhesive. So I highly recommend you just stick with the car and finish the project.
You could get distracted, phone could ring, you get on the phone,
and then you're gonna have a big problem with your paint if you forget it and it stays on there for an extended amount of time.
If you're planning this and you watch my video before you actually do this project, I would get a plastic scraper.
This way you can use it right now and start to scrape this product off and not do any damage to your paint.
But don't use anything metal. Don't use razor blades. Don't use anything that could scratch your paint.
The glue will take more time than removing the actual plastic. And many coats because the glue spreads around.
It's a slow process, but I'd rather go slow and get it done right then have any damage to my paint.
This is almost complete.
Just a couple of spots here. Make sure you wash these right after you finish.
Throw them in your machine. Get them washed. You don't want this chemical sitting on the towels.
Feel it with your hand. Make sure you get all the adhesive off.
Don't put any wax on until the adhesive is off.
Before you put wax on you gotta hit this with some regular water. Looks good. It's nice and clean.
I'm just gonna take some water. That's what this is, just plain water.
I'm gonna spray this down just to neutralize the chemical so it doesn't keep being activated.
Now what I'm going to do is get another rag.
You need lots of rags for the wax. I'm gonna apply the wax. I use the the Adams detail spray.
That's what I use. I love this stuff. It does an amazing job.
I'm going to go over and beyond the area that I worked on. If you want, do the whole car.
This stuff is really some of the best stuff out there that I've used. Okay, it's beautiful.
I'm going to open the door and put a little wax on the inside because chemical got into that door groove.
You can see that removing that white panel or plastic that protects from rocks...
They don't put it up in the front here. No problem there.
It's the rocks that get kicked back to this panel over here. Alright that's it.
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