[AP-Signworks]

Hey guys, as some of you know, a few members here have experience problems with the adhesion of their doorsills. So far it has been only the TL's. Obviously this puzzled us greatly because we know how strong the tape we use is, it's the industry standard. So after a bunch of phone calls to 3M, and some testing of our own, we've found out the problem.

It's not the tape itself. We thought maybe we had a bad roll, but we tested it, and it's fine. We even sent samples back to 3M, and they confirmed nothing was wrong.

It's not the fact that we now use strips of tape instead of the full backing. I put 2 2" strips on a 2lb 3.5OZ diamond plate floormat and it has held it vertically for 4 days now. No way 10 of those strips on a doorsills isn't going to keep a 2OZ doorsill stuck to a horizontal surface. The strips of tape are thicker, and they conform better to the ridges in the plastic. the older thin tape we used did not conform to some of the ridges which led to gaps and dirt collection on the tape.

And the final thing we found was that of all the doorsills that we took back for adhesion problems, the tape was still good on all of them. Some of you wrapped the sills in paper, the paper was stuck to the tape. Others used wax paper, so we got to examine the tape. And guess what? It's still got full adhesion. We stuck those sills to our table, walls, and so on and some of them have been there for 3+ weeks now and no problems of the tape failing.

It's the plastic doorsills themselves. Some of them have plastic mold release agents on them from the factory, others have been treated at the dealer with protectant (both local dealers here in the ATL do it, so most of yours probably do it too.) It's part of their detailing before they give you the keys. The professional stuff that most dealers use is stronger than Armor All, it's a great detailing product, but not great for the tape. It's like trying to stick the sills to a wax paper surface, it won't happen. Our tape comes on cardboard tubes treated with silicone to prevent sticking, so you can imagine what silicone on the plastic is causing.

Rubbing alcohol isn't nearly strong enough to cut through this stuff. Acetone will, and so will 3M plastic cleaner, as will Prep All (cleaning compound found in most auto parts stores). So with all new shipments of sills going out, we are sending out modified instructions for the install as well as a package of adhesion promoter. This stuff makes the plastic more "tacky" and will help with the adhesion, especially if you did not clean the sills well.

For those of you with the sills already installed, if you have adhesion problems, email me and we will take care of it. There haven't been too many lately, but maybe it has happened to some of you and you haven't let us know yet.

This is still a very miniscule portion of the total number of sills we've sold. Since we've started, we've moved something like 1100 sets of sills (between the TL, CL, Legend, Accord, Maxima, Civics, Integras, Preludes, Eclipses and so on) and we have had about 20-25 people complain about adhesion problems. And at least 18 of them drove TL's, so it's kind of localized. 7 of those with problems confirmed the use of Armor All, and 3 more told us that their dealerships did indeed detail the car with plastic protectant. The rest swore up and down that they never used Armor All in their lives, and that they cleaned the sills with acetone, etc. They were professional installers or something else like that. But it still didn't stick, yeah sure.

I almost considered not posting this, I was afraid that it would start a panic, that people would think all the sills were like this. But I figured better to get it out in the open because I didn't want anyone thinking we were trying to sweep this under the rug. And if I inform you guys now, we should be able to prevent this problem from occuring in the future. With better cleaning of the plastic and use of adhesion promoter, there is no way these sills won't stick.