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Applying & Removing Car Stickers

Cars create a sense of pride in their owners and define to a certain extent the identities of the people that drive them. Your car reveals your personality by styling your car with different accessories. It makes your car unique and easy to differentiate from other cars that look like yours. You might even consider your car to be your second home as you spend a considerable amount of time in it and you often keep things in your car that make the environment more pleasing to you. The art of dressing up cars to convey a message or to exhibit the personality of self is not new age and has been around since the invention of the car itself. Car beautification, modification, and alteration are terms long associated with the car industry and have converted into individual businesses to give birth to an industry of their own – one that runs parallel to the mainstream of car industry.

Car modifications range from using different car accessories to entirely re-doing the car’s body, cabin, and powertrain. Trendy car gadgets and eye-catching car body graphics are the most commonly sought after car alterations. Automobile graphics are the cheaper means of alteration as compared to the other types. Different types of car graphics are available in the market today such as race car graphics, vinyl car graphics, and other custom car graphics. Of these, vinyl car stickers are the most popular and widely used type. A wide range of stickers in various colours, designs, shapes, sizes, and brands are available in the market today. A good amount of car stickers can completely change the looks of a car and provide it with a unique identity.

bullet Applying a Car Sticker:

Car stickers are safe, effective, and cheap. They are also easier to apply than other types of car graphics as they are self adhesive.

While the process of applying a sticker on your car is pretty simple, it can easily turn into a cumbersome task if not done correctly. A few easy techniques can be followed to make the sticker apply neatly and cleanly on the car.
  1. Before applying the sticker, it is important to clean the surface using a little alcohol to make the area dust-free.
  2. Do not remove the wax paper behind the sticker yet. Hold the sticker on the surface in the required angle and across the required horizontal in a proper manner. Try using a measuring scale for better precision.
  3. Apply masking tape through the full distance across the top, half on the sticker and half on the surface.
  4. Now, slowly lift the sticker and remove the wax paper as well as the masking tape. Be careful while doing this as there is a chance that the sticker might fall onto the tape.
  5. Press the squeegee outwards and inwards (on the sticker) without skipping any area as there is chance for bubbles and wrinkles forming (squeegee is the T-shaped window glass cleaning tool with a wide rubber strip at the end)
  6. Press firmly and slowly remove the masking tape from one corner. Keep the tape close to the surface area as it reduces the risk of pulling the sticker out along with the tape. After this, slowly wash and wipe the sticker area clean with window cleaner liquid. Make sure that you give a proper soap wash to the area within a few days from applying the sticker.

bullet Removing a Car Sticker:

There are times when you want to get rid of an outdated sticker on your car or you want to replace it with something else. Removing a sticker can be tiresome and a good deal of patience. It is best done using your fingernails to peel it off or using a small blade to tear off pieces of the sticker from the car body. Using the techniques mentioned below, you can remove the sticker without doing harm to the car’s paint and in case you do happen to put a scar on the car, you can paint over it with a procedure called ‘touching’.
  1. You can remove the sticker using only your fingernails. This is easy but requires plenty of patience as the sticker will not come out easily.
  2. You can also use a hair dryer to blow hot air onto the sticker to melt the glue to make the peeling process easier. Make sure that the gush of air is not so hot that it'll damage the paint.
  3. Spraying diluted alcohol over the sticker is also useful as the mixture of ethanol and water of fixed proportions will soak the sticker well and make peeling easy. Be sure to rub off the residue with a mild cloth and wash the area with mild soap before starting to peel the sticker off. In case the soap in not mild enough and damages the luster of body paint, using body wax to polish the body back to its former sheen. This is called ‘touching’.
  4. A word of caution with touching up the car’s body - before waxing make sure that the area is properly washed and wiped dry. Some brands of waxes contain small particles known as abrasives which can damage the clear-coat and lacquer paint finish and may be harmful to dark-coloured paint. Try and get hold of wax that is marked ‘non-abrasive’.
A car without any scratches or dents is a rare sight on the road these days. Car owners either don't have time to notice it or put up with it due to lack of time to take the car to a mechanic. Applying car stickers or touching up the body of the car are easy and quick ways to cover the scratches on the paint.

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