Total Motorcycle Community Forums

I just bought my first bike - a 92 Suzuki GS500E. I don't mind the purple base color, but the hot pink graphics are a little too "disco era" for me. The graphics are obviously OEM "stick-ons" - has anyone removed them without harming the underlying paint? Heat gun, acetone, etc.? Any advice appreciated.

If they really are add-ons and not lying underneath the bike's clearcoat finish, you can remove them easily with a bit of heat. You can use a hair dryer or a heat gun - obviously you'll have to be careful with the heat gun - or you can just let the bike sit in the sun for an hour to soften the adhesive. Use your fingernail to lift a corner of the sticker and then peel it slowly away. Any glue residue can be removed with Windex and a paper towel or "Goo-Gone", which is a liquid made just for this purpose and won't harm the paint.

yeah - I'm not sure if there is clearcoat on top of the stickers or not - feels like there might be. Guess I can try and see if I can lift the corner after heating it.

the only thing I'de be worried about is the discoloration of the paint on the rest of the bike. Whwn you remove your decals the paint under it will look new and the outline of where the decal used to be will be very visible. The rest of your paint has had more than a decade to fade a bit so you may want to look into having another decal made up to cover where the old one was. I made custom decals for my own VF1000F with corel 10 and printed them on paper and cut the paper off around it so I could place it on the bike to fit and make ajustments. After I got it just right I e-mailed it to a local printing shop who does these and in a couple days I had a new decal set. It cost me $60 to get them printed which is much cheaper than buying OEM and this way I got a decal set I liked cuz I made em.

Or you can repaint the bike

Which ever way you go, let us know how it turns out.

mswarrior wrote:the only thing I'de be worried about is the discoloration of the paint on the rest of the bike. Whwn you remove your decals the paint under it will look new and the outline of where the decal used to be will be very visible. The rest of your paint has had more than a decade to fade a bit so you may want to look into having another decal made up to cover where the old one was.

Another option is to wax the bike before you take off the decals - that way you will get the best possible finish the current paint has to offer when you take off the old decals.