It depends on the sticker or decal of course. A water slide style would pull off pretty easily with that sort of treatment. Tougher stuff wouldn't. And if they are tougher you risk pulling off the paint instead. Paint adhesion does have its own limit and while it's pretty tough it's not like it's part of the metal.

cyccommute, I hear ya on the need to match the solvent to the job at hand. For years I've been telling people that mineral spirits or WD40 does a superb job on most self stick adhesive backings but they keep saying "yeah but if that's good then rubbing alchohal/lacquer thinner/brake cleaner/etc/etc MUST be better". I try but they often don't seem to get it.

It's like when I tried to use what I had on hand to thin down some rubber cement I had that was going thick. I sniffed the bottle but got some mixed messages. So I tried a ball o' the snot with lacquer thinner (that grand soup of solvents) and it currdled. So I tried some other stuff I had and THAT currdled. I finally tried some old auto enamel paint "reducer" that worked like the cat's pajamas.

Most stickers come off when near a halogen lamp. It melts the adhesive and peels off easily. Too much exposure to the halogen bulb will toast it. Do it 15 seconds at a time.

Matching solvents to the job at hand is what I do to support my bicycle habit:D I even have an invention for mixing 2 things that don't mix together by modifying them with a third solvent and using the whole mismash to remove the stuff that holds trees together. It makes a okay great paper, a good feedstock for screwdriver handles (and many other things:rolleyes:) or a feedstock for making ethanol.

It's been a while since I worked with rubber cement but, if I recall correctly, the solvent is mostly ethyl acetate.

A heat gun set to a low heat that doen't quite burn your skin works as well. Just warm up the sticker and slowly pull with a moderate but steady pressure and be patient. The glue WILL release but a bigger sticker may take a good 10 minutes to work its way off. By being this patient we can often remove entire stickers with no residual glue left on the surface. Or at most just a little patch here and there. And often THOSE can be lifted by dabbing the sticky backside of the sticker onto the stubborn spots and snapping it back up.

Then once you've got the sticker itself off if there's any residual glue that stuck to the bike instead of the sticker THEN you can use the solvents mentioned here to soften and wash it away.

I'd assumed that we would all have taken off the sticker first by whatever means before dealing with the glue. Trying to use solvent to remove the sticker itself is doomed to failure unless you're willing to keep it soaked in the solvent for literally hours or days to let the solvent work at the edges and finally meet in the middle.

Decal Removal and Apply
 

Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on the decal removal and for reapplying them. I recently removed a decal from a Santana tandem. I spoke with Santana before I started and their suggestion worked great for me. I used a hairdryer. My hairdryer had 2 settings for heat and 2 for fan speed. I used the high heat setting and the low fan speed. This was a slow process so, be patient. I started at the top end of the decal and let it heat up for about a minute. Then I used a flexible plastic membership card that I had to slowly push the old decal off. As I said, it took a while but the hairdryer and plastic card did the trick without damaging the paint. This decal did not have a clear coat over it. The decal was installed over the clear coat so, that made it possible to be removed and that is also what made it possible to be scratched in the first place.

I then used Mequires cleaner wax to remove the left over glue from the decal. This also worked great and left the paint clean and shiney.

Now putting the decal on was also tedious. I placed masking tape about 3 layers thick along the top of the location for the decal. I practiced placing the decal on bike several times before actually removing the paper that exposes the decal. Once I figured out the correct location I marked the tape and the back of the decal with a felt tip pen for alignment. I then removed the paper to expose the decal and slowly matched up the marks on the decal with the tape. Then carefully take the plastic card and rub the back of the decal. I started in the middle and smoothed the decal in each direction. Be sure to rub this over and over to make sure the decal is completely attached to the bike before ever starting to remove the back paper. In my case the paper began to remove on its own but if not, start at one corner and remove carefully at an angle.

Then your done. Admire your work.