I am going to be repainting my SA this summer and want to take all of the badges off the car so I can repaint them while my car is being painted. I tried to remove one but it snapped because it was so old and brittle. I don't want to break any more because those things are fairly expensive in catalogs. Anyone have any tips on removing the badges without snapping them?

 

Best thing to do is heat them up with a hairdryer and gently remove them
with a plastic body putty knife but they will probably break anyhow
If your gonna bear the expense of a new paint job why not new emblems
too -

 

are they glued on with no holes underneath? i have cracked emblems. i was gonna just remove them all together so more people can ask me what kind of car is that? is that a datsun.

 

if you guarente DO NOT want to break them you need to get behind them and tap the plastic tabs with a rubber mallot. i use to always break them but with this method i have broken zero. i part cars all the time.

 

Go to ebay motors, and search RX7 Badges. This guy sells all the eblems even for the 79.

 

On of the reasons they keep breaking - maybe THE - is that they are held on from behind with a metal retainer that clips on and grips the pegs. The more you pull the more they grip till *snap*. You need to get in behind the badge with needle-nose pliers and gently twist (rotate) the clips and pull them at the same time to work them off the pegs. I believe in the SAs the front and sides have 3 pegs, the rear "Mazda" and "Rotary Engine" have 2 pegs. They are not glued on. I agree with others here that you might want to replace them with new badges, all still available at the moment, because new badges look nice on new paint
One BIG suggestion: The metal clips used to hold on the SA badges can be a source of rust, since they dig into the paint in the inside of the body: the 81+ FBs use a PLASTIC circular clip that will not damage paint and cause rust, these fit no problem on SA badges.

Another point - if your not going to change the body color, think about NOT removing the body side mouldings off the SA. They are actually very easy to mask cleanly, assuming no body work requires their removal. Why? They are a BEAR to get back on properly and stay on - and a new set is over $500! (actually, they are discontinued now anyway)

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

Dental floss works awsome. Heat the emblem up with a hari dryer will work but you can buy a heat gun at ace hardware or wherever for about 20 and hell you should already have dental floss. Then just like flossing run the floss in between the body and the emblem comes out perfect.

 

that might work for the gs or gsl badge on the back of the car, the ones held on with adhesive but the mazda ones on the front and back and the rx7 ones on the side and held in by tabs and clips. no adhesive on them.