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This update involves some cosmetic changes I've been wanting to make...I decided long ago that I did not approve of the corporate name change from Dodge to Ram...Being a traditionalist, I prefer the original moniker...The Dodge brothers began manufacture of trucks more than a hundred years ago applying the "Dodge Brothers Motor Vehicles" badge to their finished products, but as the current name change was instituted, the division's president, Fred Diaz, apparently sensed Truckman's impending annoyance when he publicly stated:
"Ram trucks will always and forever be Dodges. Ram will always have the Dodge emblem inside and outside and they will be 'vinned' as a Dodge."
At least partially true to his word, on my truck the digital overhead display proudly proclaims the name "Dodge" when the ignition switch is activated, and the VIN decodes as, "make - Dodge, model - Ram chassis cab"...However, Fred seems to have reneged somewhat on his promise as nowhere on the outside of the truck does the name "Dodge" appear as it was delivered from the factory in Saltillo, Mexico...Knowing Fred's heart was true, and that this oversight may have been merely an error in translation in instructions from corporate ownership in Italy, to plant personnel in Mexico, then to delivery in the USA, Truckman took it upon himself to correct this miscue...
Relying on the world's supplier of everything imaginable, Amazon, new chrome "Dodge" badges were obtained, and since anyone with functional ears can easily discern the engine make of this truck, I also ordered matching "Diesel" badges to honor our founder, Rudolph Diesel...These have replaced the "RAM 3500 HEAVY DUTY" and "Cummins Turbo Diesel" on the doors of the beast...They were approximately the size of flatscreen TV's as seen in earlier pics...I was also not entirely happy with the embossed ram's head on the stock grille, and through the services of Amazon, I procured a replacement honeycomb grille complete with surround, and a retro design "Dodge Brothers Motor Vehicles" badge to mount in the center...This change also corrects the minor, yet annoying, bubbling present in the chrome of the original plastic grille...I'm certain Fred would approve, although we have never met...I also decided to replace the original but foggy-looking headlights with stylish new black ones, again from Amazon...
My research on this do-it-my-ownself project led me to YouTube where at the very least, hundreds of videos are posted on the subject of de-badging a vehicle...Most of these involve the use of fishing line or dental floss, strung between the hands and used in a sawing motion against the adhesive between the badge and the painted surface...I started with this method, using monofilament 10# fishing line and quickly discovered the flaws in this method...First it hurts the hands without gloves, and gloves make it difficult to get a good grip with arthritic fingers...Secondly stopping momentarily in the sawing bonds the fishing line to the old softened adhesive causing the line to break easily when resuming motion...Dental floss may have worked better, but I'll never know because I found a much easier (although scarier) method...
One of the YouTube videos showed the user starting his removal on a brand new car with dental floss, then grabbing a corner of the badge with a pair of common pliers, pulling away at the badge and using a screwdriver to gently pry off the badge...This brought a great hue and cry of anguish from commenters who were all worried about putting a gouge or scratch on the brand new factory paint...But it seemed to work well in the video...Truckman, being the fearless type he is, and wishing to reduce further damage to his fingers as well as spending less time under the blistering sun decided to give this method a try...Having already started a corner on the large RAM badge on a door, I noticed its edges were perpendicular to the painted surface allowing a good gripping surface for the pliers...
Careful to keep the steel plier jaws away from the paint, I gripped the plastic emblem, and found I could easily pull it away from the body panel enough to stretch and separate the adhesive...Using a small, thin-bladed screwdriver I carefully poked holes in the stretched adhesive while pulling steadily away from the paint...This separated more of the adhesive allowing me room to gently and slowly rock and twist the badge away from the paint until it popped free...The other badges had beveled edges making it impossible to grip with the pliers...For these I used one of the old plastic badge fragments against the paint as a fulcrum, and very carefully used my thin-bladed screwdriver as a lever to put pressure against the edge of the badge pulling it away from the paint...Any small non-marring material could be used as a fulcrum, but the badge fragment was handy...
When the badge was separated from the paint a small distance, I was able to latch onto a corner with the serrated jaws of the pliers, and from there I could simply (and gently) rock and twist the emblem until it worked free from the adhesive...Using this method left no dents, scratches or other blemishes on the paint, but next came the hard part...The black, sticky and nasty adhesive in the shape of the removed badge remains on the paint...All the YouTube videos seem to work with brand new cars in which the adhesive is fairly new and pliable...The users merely sprayed it with Goo Gone, and easily peeled off the residue with their fingers...Not so in my case...The adhesive on my truck was old and had been baking in the Texas sun for ten years...
Goo Gone was worthless against this mess as it clung relentlessly to my original paint...I used an old credit card and a plastic kitchen dish scraper with the Goo Gone, and made some small progress, but I estimate I would have spent two to three full days per badge getting it all off...This was unacceptable...I remembered reading somewhere of a device called a 3M Eraser Wheel which was used to remove old pinstriping from paint, and decided to give it a try...I found it on Amazon, but wanted it that day, so off I went shopping with the ugly splotch on one side of my truck...Big box stores such as Lowes and Home Depot had never heard of it, but one man at a True Value hardware store had worked at a body shop in the past and actually had one in his toolbox at home...He said he had used it on pinstriping and decals with great success...He directed me to Tasco Auto Color in Conroe, a business that supplies custom mixed paint and other materials to commercial body shops...They not only had plenty in stock, but offered it with or without an arbor...
I chose with an arbor and bought it for less than the price I found on Amazon without the arbor...They also stocked a cheaper product, but I was advised by the business owner that it would do the same job, but would only last about half the life of the 3M product...I bought the 3M and a can of 3M Auto Adhesive Remover which he advised me was superior to Goo Gone for this purpose...I then headed home to try it...The Eraser Wheel is a solid rubber wheel about 4 1/2 inches in diameter with a threaded center for the arbor...I chucked it into my Dewalt cordless drill, and went to work on the adhesive...I was told that it worked just like a pencil eraser against paper, but was advised it made an unholy mess of powdered adhesive residue on the surrounding paint...He said to use the 3M adhesive solvent on a clean rag, and this would wipe away clean...He was right...
The remaining adhesive was quickly removed (remember to set your drill direction to tighten the wheel against the threaded arbor so it doesn't fly off), and the small remaining flecks of adhesive were removed easily with the solvent...This only left some "ghost lettering" which was the result of the contrast between the old sun-baked paint and the newly exposed paint under the removed badges...A few minutes with clean rags and Turtle Polishing Compound left a glistening surface with absolutely no damage to the clearcoat finish...The badges on the right side of the beast took several hours to remove counting my time with trial and error methods, and shopping time for the eraser wheel...The badges on the driver side were removed and all cleaned up in about a half hour with proper materials and a newly educated amateur technician...
I remembered to take photos of the entire operation which can be found in the accompanying pictorial...Moving forward to the next badge removal, we find easier work although the badge itself is considerably larger...Evicting the ram from the grille involves replacing the grille altogether...Once again Amazon came through with a replacement grille complete with surround and three LED marker lights in charcoal gray from Tidal Automotive...Installation was simple and straightforward...The three lights were wired to the parking light circuit...The headlights turned out a little more difficult...The right one installed quickly, but on taking it back out later I found that the rear mounting stud just spins in its socket...And the left one was manufactured wrong making it really difficult to reuse the original parking light...Ingenuity won the day however, and they all work...They were marketed by Xtune through Amazon, and if anyone else is thinking of the same project, remember caveat emptor...For the grille badge I had to fabricate a backing plate to attach to the grille...Then the badge was attached to the backing plate...
I can also update some info concerning my prior lighting adventure...I published my previous update before I had received the load resistors necessary to make the new LED turn signals flash at a normal rate...After receiving the needed parts, I installed the final LED's with the load resistors, and on testing all functions afterward it was found that the light strip which I had originally installed on the tailboard in prior months no longer worked correctly...It was suddenly backfeeding through the backup light circuit...This was a plug-and-play unit with a separately wired backup circuit...My troubleshooting led me to discover that if I simply unplugged it all the other lighting returned to normal function...I then noticed that the light strip had been incorrectly wired from the factory (yes, Chinese) crossing circuits on two wires...Using jumper wires, I found that even if I corrected this error, and completed the circuits as they should be, the unit would not work at all...At this point, I decided to just replace it with the same brand (Rampage, also a plug-and-play) which had worked flawlessly on my previous truck...After installation I had all functions again, but the Rampage does not have one feature which the Chinese product did have, sequential turn signals...I can learn to live without that neat feature since everything else now operates as it should...
The accompanying pictorial offers more detail...
My research on this do-it-my-ownself project led me to YouTube where at the very least, hundreds of videos are posted on the subject of de-badging a vehicle...Most of these involve the use of fishing line or dental floss, strung between the hands and used in a sawing motion against the adhesive between the badge and the painted surface...I started with this method, using monofilament 10# fishing line and quickly discovered the flaws in this method...First it hurts the hands without gloves, and gloves make it difficult to get a good grip with arthritic fingers...Secondly stopping momentarily in the sawing bonds the fishing line to the old softened adhesive causing the line to break easily when resuming motion...Dental floss may have worked better, but I'll never know because I found a much easier (although scarier) method...
One of the YouTube videos showed the user starting his removal on a brand new car with dental floss, then grabbing a corner of the badge with a pair of common pliers, pulling away at the badge and using a screwdriver to gently pry off the badge...This brought a great hue and cry of anguish from commenters who were all worried about putting a gouge or scratch on the brand new factory paint...But it seemed to work well in the video...Truckman, being the fearless type he is, and wishing to reduce further damage to his fingers as well as spending less time under the blistering sun decided to give this method a try...Having already started a corner on the large RAM badge on a door, I noticed its edges were perpendicular to the painted surface allowing a good gripping surface for the pliers...
Careful to keep the steel plier jaws away from the paint, I gripped the plastic emblem, and found I could easily pull it away from the body panel enough to stretch and separate the adhesive...Using a small, thin-bladed screwdriver I carefully poked holes in the stretched adhesive while pulling steadily away from the paint...This separated more of the adhesive allowing me room to gently and slowly rock and twist the badge away from the paint until it popped free...The other badges had beveled edges making it impossible to grip with the pliers...For these I used one of the old plastic badge fragments against the paint as a fulcrum, and very carefully used my thin-bladed screwdriver as a lever to put pressure against the edge of the badge pulling it away from the paint...Any small non-marring material could be used as a fulcrum, but the badge fragment was handy...
When the badge was separated from the paint a small distance, I was able to latch onto a corner with the serrated jaws of the pliers, and from there I could simply (and gently) rock and twist the emblem until it worked free from the adhesive...Using this method left no dents, scratches or other blemishes on the paint, but next came the hard part...The black, sticky and nasty adhesive in the shape of the removed badge remains on the paint...All the YouTube videos seem to work with brand new cars in which the adhesive is fairly new and pliable...The users merely sprayed it with Goo Gone, and easily peeled off the residue with their fingers...Not so in my case...The adhesive on my truck was old and had been baking in the Texas sun for ten years...
Goo Gone was worthless against this mess as it clung relentlessly to my original paint...I used an old credit card and a plastic kitchen dish scraper with the Goo Gone, and made some small progress, but I estimate I would have spent two to three full days per badge getting it all off...This was unacceptable...I remembered reading somewhere of a device called a 3M Eraser Wheel which was used to remove old pinstriping from paint, and decided to give it a try...I found it on Amazon, but wanted it that day, so off I went shopping with the ugly splotch on one side of my truck...Big box stores such as Lowes and Home Depot had never heard of it, but one man at a True Value hardware store had worked at a body shop in the past and actually had one in his toolbox at home...He said he had used it on pinstriping and decals with great success...He directed me to Tasco Auto Color in Conroe, a business that supplies custom mixed paint and other materials to commercial body shops...They not only had plenty in stock, but offered it with or without an arbor...
I chose with an arbor and bought it for less than the price I found on Amazon without the arbor...They also stocked a cheaper product, but I was advised by the business owner that it would do the same job, but would only last about half the life of the 3M product...I bought the 3M and a can of 3M Auto Adhesive Remover which he advised me was superior to Goo Gone for this purpose...I then headed home to try it...The Eraser Wheel is a solid rubber wheel about 4 1/2 inches in diameter with a threaded center for the arbor...I chucked it into my Dewalt cordless drill, and went to work on the adhesive...I was told that it worked just like a pencil eraser against paper, but was advised it made an unholy mess of powdered adhesive residue on the surrounding paint...He said to use the 3M adhesive solvent on a clean rag, and this would wipe away clean...He was right...
The remaining adhesive was quickly removed (remember to set your drill direction to tighten the wheel against the threaded arbor so it doesn't fly off), and the small remaining flecks of adhesive were removed easily with the solvent...This only left some "ghost lettering" which was the result of the contrast between the old sun-baked paint and the newly exposed paint under the removed badges...A few minutes with clean rags and Turtle Polishing Compound left a glistening surface with absolutely no damage to the clearcoat finish...The badges on the right side of the beast took several hours to remove counting my time with trial and error methods, and shopping time for the eraser wheel...The badges on the driver side were removed and all cleaned up in about a half hour with proper materials and a newly educated amateur technician...
I remembered to take photos of the entire operation which can be found in the accompanying pictorial...Moving forward to the next badge removal, we find easier work although the badge itself is considerably larger...Evicting the ram from the grille involves replacing the grille altogether...Once again Amazon came through with a replacement grille complete with surround and three LED marker lights in charcoal gray from Tidal Automotive...Installation was simple and straightforward...The three lights were wired to the parking light circuit...The headlights turned out a little more difficult...The right one installed quickly, but on taking it back out later I found that the rear mounting stud just spins in its socket...And the left one was manufactured wrong making it really difficult to reuse the original parking light...Ingenuity won the day however, and they all work...They were marketed by Xtune through Amazon, and if anyone else is thinking of the same project, remember caveat emptor...For the grille badge I had to fabricate a backing plate to attach to the grille...Then the badge was attached to the backing plate...
I can also update some info concerning my prior lighting adventure...I published my previous update before I had received the load resistors necessary to make the new LED turn signals flash at a normal rate...After receiving the needed parts, I installed the final LED's with the load resistors, and on testing all functions afterward it was found that the light strip which I had originally installed on the tailboard in prior months no longer worked correctly...It was suddenly backfeeding through the backup light circuit...This was a plug-and-play unit with a separately wired backup circuit...My troubleshooting led me to discover that if I simply unplugged it all the other lighting returned to normal function...I then noticed that the light strip had been incorrectly wired from the factory (yes, Chinese) crossing circuits on two wires...Using jumper wires, I found that even if I corrected this error, and completed the circuits as they should be, the unit would not work at all...At this point, I decided to just replace it with the same brand (Rampage, also a plug-and-play) which had worked flawlessly on my previous truck...After installation I had all functions again, but the Rampage does not have one feature which the Chinese product did have, sequential turn signals...I can learn to live without that neat feature since everything else now operates as it should...
The accompanying pictorial offers more detail...
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