Alpine decals replacing?

[turbopilot51]

While getting ready for our latest trip I noticed that the Alpine decal is yellowing and cracking. Does anyone have an idea as to the cost for replacement and installation?

[JRTJH]

You might want to contact Keystone Customer Sevice and see if they would consider a "good will gesture" by providing replacement decals. They have made this offer to some (certainly not all) owners in the past. There doesn't seem to be an "rhyme or reason" as to who gets approved and who is denied. At least I haven't been able to figure out their "yes/no" formula.

If they do make the offer, it would be "decals only" and you'd be responsible for removal of the old ones and installation of the new ones. Not a technically difficult task, but it is time consuming and labor intensive.

Otherwise, your options are to check EBay, Trekwood and of course, a local sign shop in your area. Many times they can make decals that are a better quality for much less than the cost of the "inferior" OEM decals.

Your Alpine is a 2012 model, so the decals are around 5 years old. That's about "par for the course" with decals from that era. The more recent Keystone decals seem to be of the "7 year variety" but earlier versions were doing good to last 3 years and great if they lasted 4 or 5. Of course much of that depending on where the RV was stored, how much sunlight and heat it was exposed to and how the owner maintained and stored the RV.

Good Luck,

[dirt33]

Our decals were all starting to get pretty bad right around the 4 year mark (the front cap was of course the worst). I contacted Keystone and discovered that they would offer no assistance.

Did a lot of searching around, and determined that ordering from Trekwood would be the best/easiest route. Price? Expensive. $500 or so just to buy the decals to re-do only the front cap on our trailer. To purchase every decal for the entire trailer, it was $2500 or so.

I purchased one decal for $60 or so, as it is the lone "oddball" colored decal on the front cap, and was in the worst shape. Taking off the old decal and removing all of the old adhesive was quite a chore. Applying the new decal wasn't too bad.

All told, given the cost and the time needed to remove the old decals, I decided to just "live with it". Most of our decals are in below average to poor shape. I just make sure to keep it waxed 2-3 times a year, and try to keep the sun off of it as much as possible. I absolutely plan to shoot for "full body paint" on our next RV.

I had been in contact with a couple sign shops. They would produce new decals in one color for sure, and the price would be a bit cheaper than Trekwood. However, they could NOT re-create "multi colors", "shading", etc, which 90% of the decals on our trailer have.

I also checked with a shop near me that specializes in painting RVs. They quoted $2500 just to paint the front cap of our trailer.

Edit, I re-read the original post. If you are needing only 1 decal, ordering from Trekwood and replacing it yourself wouldn't be too bad at all.

[gearhead]

3M Stripe Off Wheel is supposed to "fly" decals off. I haven't used it. Amazon has it complete with their usual reviews.
If I decide to tackle the decals on the recently acquired cabover, I might leave it "nekkid".