Hey guys I previously made a how to, to remove the side moldings way back when for the protege5, and figured I'd do it again for the Mazdaspeed3/Mazda3.
Here we go!
What you will need:
1 x 3M Adhesive Remover
1 x Bondo Putty Knife
1 x Paper Towel Roll
4 x Kitchen Garbage bags
1 x Awesome Meguiars Car Wax (Love the smell)
1 x Roll of Painters Tape
1 x Bottle of Windex
Note in this picture I forgot a couple things I have on the list, however, it does give you a good idea of what the 3M adhesive remover looks like, as well as the putty knife. I bought the 3M stuff in the paint section of a local automotive parts store, next to the rice parts aisle, lol.
First thing you want to do is take your 3M adhesive remover and make a small punture in it, so you can sprinkle the stuff, instead of pour it all over your car.
Now, you will need to run a length of painters tape along the bottom edge of your door guard. When you put it on, however, you want to leave the bottom edge of it not stuck against the car. Then take one of your garbage bags and rip it down along the seam on both sides, so you have a straight edge, and slide the edge up into the bottom edge of the tape, hanging it down like a curtain over your rocker panel/side skirts. The reason for this is so you don't let the adhesive remover drip down into the seam of your side skirts, possibly loosening them, as they are also held on by adhesive along the edges. Then, put about four inches of tape along the top edge of the door guard, at the tapered portion, so you have something to rest the putty knife on, when pulling up the guard.
Next, sprinkle your 3m adhesive remover along the top of the guard, letting it run down into the door guard, seaping into the double sided tape. I let the 3m stuff work for about 3 minutes before I started working on it again. Take your putty knife, and clean off any plastic burrs, that might cause small scratches in your clear. Then, take the tip of the knife and slip it up under the tapered edge of the door guard, and pull up the first inch, just enough to give you a handle to grab. Then, without the putty knife, grab the edge you pulled up, and pull it the rest of the way, pealing it off the car.
Majority of the doublesided tape should come off. My car was only a month old just about, when I did this, but it worked just as well on my protege5 when I had it for 6 months, before trying this. This is what wil be left behind.
Using your fingernail, scrape away the large excess adhesive, then, 8" sections at a time, take a square folded peice of paper towel, and sprinkle along 8" of remaining adhesive, wiping excess remover on your towel, then in small circles, 'wax off' the adhesive. If you work in 8" sections or smaller, with the remover, it should come away having done this routine once or twice.
Your tape may leave some adhesive behind, so I just used windex to do the final clean up.
All you have left to do is wax the panel, so the drying behavior matches the rest of the car, and there will be no trace it was ever there. You can apply this same tactic to the rear Mazdaspeed3 emblem. Unfortunately the Mazda3 emblem has holes behind it, so don't try this, with the Mazda3 emblem.