Debadged my Santa Fe

OCDinPDX

Paint Ph.D
It's time for a little work on my car. Last night I got incredibly bored and decided to de-badge the old girl. I have some before photos but don't feel like looking for them.

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And the fallen soldiers...

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Badges are like nose hair. Sure, there not really bothering anything, but it looks much better to clip that mess :inspector:

I was recentally successfull in talking a client into debadging there AMG E55 took me 2 years.... He said, we should've done this 2 years ago :hmmm:

Congrats on the transformation OCD. Much cleaner looking now :rockon


Jared, it looks like he used a plastic razor blade. I personally use fishin line, dental floss works also :notme:
 
FWIW, I'm not really a fan of debadging, but there's a couple of emblems on my door that I have thought about removing for cleaning efficiency's sake.
 
...it looks like he used a plastic razor blade. I personally use fishin line, dental floss works also :notme:

Dental floss and a hair dryer are my go to tools when de-badging. Don't you hate it when you get half way through and find out it is a blind pin badge? I think that most who have done this with any frequency have had to reapply some 3M double stick tape for those occasional surprises. I keep both a roll of white and black double stick on hand for just such an occasion. :cool:
 
FWIW, I'm not really a fan of debadging, but there's a couple of emblems on my door that I have thought about removing for cleaning efficiency's sake.

Dental floss and a hair dryer are my go to tools when de-badging. Don't you hate it when you get half way through and find out it is a blind pin badge? I think that most who have done this with any frequency have had to reapply some 3M double stick tape for those occasional surprises. I keep both a roll of white and black double stick on hand for just such an occasion. :cool:

One of the reasons why I rarely undertake the process.
 
One of the reasons why I rarely undertake the process.

It can be a roll of the dice. I've actually had this happen on vehicles that were one model year newer though still the same body style as the previous year. The 2001 was slicker than a whistle, the 2002 had a pinned badge (SuperCrew's)
 
I spoke with somebody who had debadged an '04 Santa Fe before and he confirmed that none of the badges were drilled into the body. In fact, seeing his car (same color as mine) minus badges was what gave me that final shove to do mine. Just in case I wasn't crazy about the finished look, I created a template (using copy paper) and marked out where the badges were before. Worst comes to worst I'll contact my local body shop to see if they have a guide on exactly where the badges are supposed to go. But I don't think I'll be putting them back on.

I used a hairdryer on 'HOT' and some dental floss along with some adhesive remover. The shadows were stubborn but I buffed out with my Makita, a 4" orange pad and some SIP.
 
Debadging was the first thing I did to my Colorado when I got it, second was painting the bowtie black. It's the little things that set yours apart from the others on the road, oh yeah, and keeping them clean also help set them apart.
 
OCD the Hyundai looks a ton better with no badges. You will never want to put them back on. I have always debadged my cars for the reasons that others have mentioned.
 
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