Alright so I finally got my hands on some stock door sill decals for SS montes and I plan on putting them on my car. They weren't easy to get off but I was careful and didn't tear the material. They are the ones that have the words 'Monte Carlo' removed so that you can see the original color of the car. My question is what should I use to remove the rest of the sticky residue on the backs of the decals, and what should I use to glue them back onto the car? I am worried they will peel up around the letters since there is that dead space and I would like to avoid that from occurring. Any advice or input is welcome, hopefully someone has done this in the past and can guide me how to do successfully.

 

Honestly I've never seen anyone reuse a sticker before. Id think the best case would be to take them to a vinyl shop that have them reproduce them on brand new vinyl.

If you're dead set on using these, I'd probably get some ultra thin 3m PSA thats wide enough the cover it (obviously you'll have to trace it with a razor knife to cut off the excess PSA once applied to the back of the sticker). I really dont see any kind of spray adhesive working as you're going to have some level of globs / bumpiness with no real way to smooth it (if you squeegee it, it'll squish out under the edge and on top of the next letter and you won't have time to clean each as most of this stuff dries fast - likely barely enough time for a single pass squeegee after you lay it down).

The tricky part will be getting the old adhesive off. Theres certainly plenty of removers thatll eat up the adhesive (sticker shock, etc), but the concern is them also eating into decal itself. The hard part is that (I assume) you don't have any excess to practice on? If you did, I'd probably try a commercial bumper sticker remover like that combined with a plastic razor blade to try to scrape it off. But there is a very high risk in damaging the decal doing that.

 

Thanks for the input! I swear on here that I have seen other members looking for these door sill decals out in junkyards and even asking to buy them from other members that had extras, so I was figuring this was a pretty common modification to montes that didn't come with them stock from the factory. I actually have I want to say three different sets of these decals now, I grab them whenever I see them in the junkyard, so I will have to try your techniques on some of the lesser quality decals.

 

I am with Bumpin, I am not sure I ever saw them being re-used. Knowing how thin they are, I was stunned to see someone managed to peal the ones out of an '02 Dale Sr car I found in the junk yard. I would be too nervous to re-use them that they will not hold or look right. But, they would be AWESOME templates to have someone new made. I had custom ones made for my 2004 Monte.
'04 Monte Carlo SS - Door Sills

Sadly, the material they are made of is starting to curl.