More Trim; Careful with the Windshield

I had a few hours, and still am not ready to paint, so I figured I'd pull off some more trim. I took off my 944 emblem (from the rear right of the car just under the rear spoiler). It is only held on with adhesive, so more work with the razor and some very careful prying and it came right up. Don't forget to take some pictures if you plan to put it back in the exact same spot.

Next up was the Porsche emblem on the hood. I had read that these screw on to the hood and the screws are a devil to get to. I looked for screws on mine, and couldn't see any. So I just got a small screwdriver under the edge of the emblem, and gave it a pry. It popped right out. Apparently, the emblem has two thick pins that extend down into plastic sleeves mounted in the hood. The friction from the sleeves (and maybe some adhesive, though I didn't see any on mine) hold it in place. Here you can see the little plastic sleeves that the pins go into. You can also see how nice and shiny the factory paint is under the emblem which wasn't removed by Maaco. I almost think I could get away without a total strip of all the paint, but I'm pretty sure it would be just as easy to strip off all the paint as it would be to try to sand through the crap paint to the factory paint or primer. Plus the factory paint is startin got fail in a few places. Oh well.

Next up is the rear hatch lock seal. It is some kind of plastic or rubber ring, and mine has been busted for some time. I tried to pry it out and it just fell apart. I shoved what I couldn't grab to be retrieved from within the hatch area, behind the carpet next to the internal taillight assemblies. I'll have to buy a new one of these. $4.75 on Pelicanparts.com (477-827-529A-M100).

Next up is the only other non-essential trim I could easily identify. The windshield trim. On my 944, the windshield is surrounded by one piece of metal trim on the top, and one on each side.  I think there is a rubber gasket that is supposed to be on the sides, but mine only had the metal. You can easily see between the glass of the windshield and the metal trim that there are a series of clips that hold this trim in. They look like this:

In theory, you should be able to slide the clip to the left and the clip will disengage from the post it sits on. This will release the pressure on the edge of the trim that is sandwiched between the two halves of the tab, like a a bookmark in a book. You can see in that picture how I am pushing on it with a screwdriver, than I tried hitting the screwdriver with a rubber mallet, then with a hammer. I just about broke the galss a few times.

In this picture above, you can see me holding the trim sideways, and the small square hole in the trim that rests in the tab, yet around the post. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how this stuff is held on. After getting the same 'nothing happening' results with all of the tabs, I decided to give up and try a different method: The pry and pray:

 

I just took a small prybar and a regular hammer and pried up gently on the edge of the trim near the top. (In retrospect, I should have put something under the hammers to distribute the pressure, like a small board or at least a towel). The trim easily slid up and out of the tab. I only lifted it a half inch and then moved down the trim until all the tabs were half out, then repeated. If you pull up on just the first tab without loosening the rest, then you risk bending the trim. Once the trim was off, the tabs all came off easily. They look like this:

I can't imagine trying to lift up the top trim to disengage any of these clips the "right" way. I did the same thing and slowly pried up the top trim without any problems. Here is a profile view of the top trim so you can see what you are dealing with:

Once the top trim was off, I was confronted with a ton of trash and dirt and sloppy silicone all around the windshield. I did some cleanup, and will probably have to clean up the edges so I can get paint down in there. Here is a close-up of the top of the windshield without the trim.

That's about all the trim that I can take off for now. Just a few more days and I'll have a borrowed car I can drive while this 944 (my daily driver) can be dismantled enough for paint. I cleaned up all the areas that I took trim off. I probably could have done this all in about 30 minutes, but I'll call it two hours due to all the fiddling it took to get the trim off without knowing what I was getting into.

Spent today: 2 hours, $0
Spent total: 4 hours, $2.50