Warning sticker removal

Anyone have tips for removal of tank stickers?

I had three of those silly warning stickers: the "Don't let something jam your triple-tree or you'll crash and die" sticker, another small one (I forget what it said - maybe "Always wear clean underwear") and a larger (US-only I think) "Don't use E-15 gas or you'll void your warrany, crash and die" sticker.

The first two came off with only a little drama, but the last just will not peel - it just keeps breaking off in microscopic bits. After a half hour I've got about 30% of it off but figured there's probably an easier way. I tried heating it up with a hair drier, but it made no difference. I didn't want to use anything (like rubbing alcohol) for fear of messing up the paint. Any tips?

Or am I just stuck with another 30-45 minutes of using my fingernail?

(I won't even mention the all-important "Fuel vapor hose routing diagram" sticker Guzzi stuck on the right side air scoop thingy - I mean, that's some serious information right there )

Ethanol or IsoPropanol Alcohol applied caringly/carefully will do the trick. Give a good polish to the surface afterwards - all good...

warm with hair dryer and they will just peel off then clean with Aerokroil.

don't use a razor blade like I did.
I am NOT as careful as I thought I was.

DungeonMaster wrote:

don't use a razor blade like I did.
I am NOT as careful as I thought I was.

Ha! Yeah - one half of my brain kept thinking "a razor blade would make it easy" while the other half yelled at it "Run away!"

I'm resigned to just using my fingernail for 1/2 hour or so. There are worse jobs I could have to do.

Faster than fingernail, safer than razor: The Pampered Chef sells 2" square-ish plastic scraping tools designed to scrape adherent food bits burnt onto expensive cooking pan surfaces. No need to apply goo until final residue removal desired. Took about 15 minutes to the big sticker off the tank of my '09

the only problem with using any type of scraping tool is on the matte or demi matte paint they can result in burnishing marks that can show, gloss paint does not do this.
That is why judicious heat and then wd-40 or the like works so well.

Ahh!
Thus, my gloss white paint still looks pristine--good point

Thanks all - I resorted to over an hour of fingernail + pledge (for lubrication) + careful use of a plastic putty knife - no burnishing!

No idea why the one sticker was such a pain; the other ones kept breaking but that just meant 3 or 4 strips to peel off. This one would only come off in tiny flakes. I'm guessing either sunlight dried out the glue or maybe some cleaner had been used previously that interacted. Dunno.

Oh, and the pledge thing - started using it years ago to clean visors at the track (unscented version unless you *really* like lemons!) and as a general cleaner. People look at you funny but it does a good job and is mild and inexpensive compared to some cleaners marketed as "bike cleaner". Talking to a machinest friend who works in the High Energy Physics Lab at Univ. of Maryland he told me they previosuly had some high dollar German-made science-fictiony piece of equipment that used a special cleaner. One of the company's techs let slip one day it was just rebranded Pledge.