MedCityMoto's "What could be wrong with those emblem overlays?" Adventure

I bought my SR5 last year in the fall, about 10 months / 20k miles ago. I immediately set to dechroming it because I really dig the look. I couldn't find good badge replacements but hey, those cheap sets of 3M overlays on Amazon! What could go wrong?

This spring one of the SR5 badge covers came off in a car wash and I went hunting for true badges, found them, bought them, and they kinda hung out in the garage for a couple months, heh. But today it was hot out and I had the thought that "well, this would save me the effort of pulling out my heat gun to debadge things" and so I set to work. This whole process took about 1.5 good end to end including beverage breaks, it was a solid 94 degrees Fahrenheit today and sunny, blue skies, great weather.

I started with the easiest of the tasks, pulling off the overlays. These came off instantly, effortlessly. I'm surprised any of them were still on!



Cool. Oh, uh, that's a lot of dirt it's captured though.

Let's keep going!


Eeww. In short, these things did 2 things well: covering chrome and catching so much dirt. Yikes. I keep my truck clean enough to draw comments from coworkers. Who knew what lurked beneath, in such short amount of time gathering?

This is after I sprayed it with just water and wiped it a little with a paper towel:



Now let's hit it with the magic juice: 100% pure ethyl alcohol:



Much better. Very bright sunlight helped me ensure not even a smudge of adhesive 3M from the OEM badges remained. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound...


Oh lordy. So much picking at these 5.7 badges. I finally recalled that I had a plastic razerblade setup I'd grabbed for window decals and went and got it, and it really helped lift up the remaining 3M.



That's after a little water and wiping again. Look at all the dirt and grime that just collected all around the covers edges. Really caked in there and they were only on for what, 8 months, as I didn't get to putting them on as quickly as I did the hood bulge and grille. After some pure alcohol and wiping, much better.



Continuing to the SR5 logo on this side, same deal.



And easily enough removed with water, wiping, alcohol, and wiping.



On to the driver's side!





Second verse, same as the first, water & alcohol and not much worse.



So in short, my recommendation and review on the matte black dechroming badge covers:

I wouldn't do this again. It's cheap and it's cheap looking and nobody's fooled, and it's bad for your truck. I'm glad I found better replacements that went on really easily enough, and they weren't on the long enough to do real harm, but man, I'd have preferred not to have run the risk in the first place.

The real deals look so much better after putting them on after a good washing down.




Bonus new 4x4 logo I'd been missing entirely, hah. Think I got the placement correct! Close enough!

 

For those that love watching those sticker removal videos, here ya go:

https://i.imgur.com/hhXHtPS.mp4