I want to remove my side rubber door/body guards on my 96' f150. My question is, will the virgin paint under the guards fade into the rest of the faded paint? and how long will it take till I won't notice the area?

 

Are you talking about the thin rubber strips that protect your door from dinging other cars?

 

well it took 16 years for your whole truck to fade so.....16 years for it to match again? lol how bad is your truck faded? couldn't be that bad, mines not faded.

 

Yeah, those stripes that protect the truck.
16 years?! I can't wait that long. I don't think its too bad but, then again, I don't have anything to compare it to. I'm pretty proud of how my truck looks still so it's probably not bad. I heard that if you take it off, that the paint will fade over a really short time, something about the oils in the virgin paint being absorbed by the old paint... ?

 

It depends on how long they were on there. If a previous owner put them on a few years ago, then the paint would have faded for x number of years along with the rest of the truck.

It shouldnt even be that noticeable given how thin the strip is.

 

i think hes talking about the 1" or so wide ruber/chrome strips that go down each side of our trucks. atleast thats what i thought he was talking about lol.

 

Yes, f150cam, those are the ones im talking about. I wouldn't consider them "thin". I just don't want to take them off and then have the truck have these huge rectangluar patches of factory fresh paint. If you think about it, has anyone ever seen a vehicle that has had the patches on it? I can't recall ever seeing that... Maybe it will blend pretty quickly.

 

someone on here took his off (wondertwin1) and you couldn't tell. but it will vary because we dont know how much your paint has faded, or are you just assuming it has?

 

Well, I used a cleaner wax on it which did a great job but you can see where I didn't do it, so it is faded just don't know if I brought it back to its original luster. Is there a place on our trucks that is protected by maybe weather stripping or trim that I can peel back and see the paint to compare?

 

usually you can either open the door and see the inside along the door jam because its usually not faded much if at all. other then that you will prob have to take off like your f150 decal on the front fender to see.