Some of the wheel well moldings and car door moldings (to guard against door dents from other cars and/or grocery carts in parking lots) have come loose and/or totally off. Some came off cleanly, others have left behind all the black sticky adhesive residue.
How do I get that residue off the car without damaging the paint?
Also, how do I get it off the back of the moldings without damaging them?
Instructions on the package of new adhesive for re-attaching the moldings says the paint and the moldings must be totally clean to re-attach them.
This is for a 20 year old car.
Suggestions???
Thanks.
Marnet
You might try some turpentine or paint thinner to cut it with.
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Goofoff. Specifically made for doing just that.
What has worked well for me is some water and a hard block pencil eraser. The goo just balls up and rolls off with no damage to the finish.
I like “Goo-B-Gone” (sp?).
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Thanks for the suggestions!
Marnet
You might try heat. Get your hair dryer out and put it on high heat. See if that softens the adhesive. You’ll still need the solvents for the last remnants, but at least you can get some off before you use the solvents. Also, use the solvents outside.
Brake parts cleaner.
Tester
13-years old thread, revived… interesting if @Marnet still has that car
Hi Marnet. I second @MikeInNH suggestion of GoofOff.
I usually don’t mind these resurrected threads. MAYBE the OP or some other person has some new info. And Marnet is one of my favorite posters – it’s been entertaining to see her knowledge, skill, and confidence grow over the years.
It is amusing, however, to note that the car was 20 years old in 2007. I wonder if newer cars – say, only 15 years old – use the same type of adhesive as in 1987. 
yeh… my comment was pretty much targeting the fact that after 33 years this car might get a chance to get that pesky adhesive removed 
at least, for once, one of these long dead revivals was started by a still current regular and we might get resolution to the actual initial question
ok, for what it worth, on few occasions, I had to remove that old adhesive to reattach rubber moldings.
GoofOff is way too strong for that, especially if the car had some aftermarket paint
regular “mineral spirits” from the HomeDepot was working slower, but way safer
Oh my, I’d long since forgotten about this thread. After 13 years I don’t recall just what I ended up doing. At the time I was dealing with my dad’s failing health and caring for him at home in hospice by myself, so most everything else from those months is a forgotten muddle after all these years. 
Anyway, that car, 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera (with the 3.8L 6-cyl engine!) is long gone. I gave it to one of my nephews a few months after I started this thread. I’ve since had the 2007 Chevy Impala that I traded in for the 2014 Camry I still have.
But now this thread has been revived, I’ll have to read back through all of it. Perhaps it will jog my memory. 
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I’m guessing I likely ended up using mineral spirits. It was my dad’s go to cleaner/solvent for many uses and there was a can of it on hand. Or a lesser possibility was trying the suggestion of using a large pencil eraser to rub off the old adhesive.
I do know that I got the door guard and wheelwell protective strips put back securely on or replaced, so I had to have cleaned the old, failed adhesive gunk off first.
Aww, thank you @art1966. You are very kind.
It has been a privilege to learn a lot here over the years. Due to physical limitations I still can’t do my own car maintenance such as changing the oil. But I have become more knowledgable about good proactive maintenance, what to keep a regular check on, questions to ask when having work done on my car, etc. And I feel far more confident about how to deal reasonably and fairly with a service department both when I get good service and when anyone tries any bs on me. The education I have gotten here on the forum has been both valuable and a privilege.
one of my “learning experiences” in the past was an attempt to fix a dollar-bill-sized dent I made on one of my relatively new car, backing up on a driveway and hitting my daughter’s first clunker-car in the dark.
it was relatively fast to get that dent popped back and bondo/primer smoothed out.
it had a white pearl (3-layer) paint, so quite predictably, my attempt to blend the color failed miserably, so I decided to paint entire quarter-panel with the whole piece going to the windshield and fenders.
here I learned another lesson: at attempt to clean it up before painting with the paint solvent actually bubbled the paint (!!!)
almost 2 weeks later, after slowly removing all the mess I made and using the mild solvents only from now on, it was finally masked/painted and in that form I had it for 5-6 more years.
the lesson was: never use anything stronger than mineral spirits and rubbing alcohol if you do not know how the paint will react to that solvent
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