Water boils at 212, but steam can be much hotter.

 

I finally got mine removed today!!! went with steam - renting a wall paper steamer from Home Depot. it worked well but still took about 45min / side to remove the old stone guard. no paint damage - a big plus. I then had plenty of adhesive to remove... I tried Goo Gone - didn't work at all for me.... I then sprung the $13 for a spray can of 3M adhesive remover - that stuff did the trick. It is still not easy but in about 30 min a side removed all the old adhesive. Now I just need to clay and polish the area and apply my new FD supplied stone guards.

That was my experience - thanks to Rennlist for all the suggestions otherwise I'd still be cussing these things!!!

 

How does a steamer work? It boils water. Only if it was under pressure would it boil at a higher temperature. And it is not. Also if you use one you'd see that the water condenses pretty quickly indicating that it is close to boiling point.

 

Steamers boil water under pressure, so I think the steam temp is above 212, but I don't really care.

I took thermodynamics a long time ago in college.

 

The energy required to hit boiling is significantly more than needed to raise the temp of water to 211 degrees so the thermal energy it carries is quite a bit higher than water just a few degrees (12x sticks in my mind) lower than boiling. Plus, steam can be heated to higher temperatures than just past 212.

 

This is correct.
It's an old trick question on high school level chemistry exams: What is hotter, water at 100C or steam at 100C?
The answer is, steam at 100C is much hotter even though they are both the same temperature.

 

A wall paper steamer does not boil under pressure. It is just a container that vents to atmosphere through a hose. Ok, so the pressure in the tank is atmosphere + the pressure drop through hose - hardly enough to raise the temperature much. Sure they have pressure relief, but that is in case hose clogs I would guess. Here is the steamer from Home Depot, and it specifies a max temp of 212F.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Earlex-25...7?N=5yc1vZbc0p

What is the definition of hot? If it is higher enthalpy, then yes,that is right. But hot is normally related to temperature.

 

Probably a dumb question, but...

Which side of the new guard goes against the car? The one that is against the white paper, or the side covered by a thin film of plastic?
I ordered the standard Porsche ones...

 

The sticky side. Lol

My guess is that would be the side with the white paper on it. The ones I got from FD didn't have the thin film on the other side.

 

If your old stone guards aren't all that bad. I used my Orbital with Griots plastic polish on them and they turned out pretty good. Might try this route before replacing. But if they are in real bad shape then replacing is probably all you can do.

 

I admire all of you dudes for doing this but I paid a shop to do this for me and it was a PITA for them.

Good guys though, they stuck to the original quote even though I offered to pay more. So glad its done. The opaque polar silver stoneguards are Blargh!!!!!

G