I painted mine with satin black RustOleum then lightly color sanded them with 2000 grit wet or dry paper before buffing them with light polishing compound. Then after I finished cleaning them I used a small brush to paint the recesses in the lettering silver. Basically reversed the stock colors.
The black background on the front emblem is indeed a separate piece that sandwiches behind the silver part. It should be really obvious once you get the emblem off. The only difficulty in leaving it off is that it causes the center of the emblem to sit the thickness of the black part above the hood and makes it difficult to re-affix with any durability.
BTW... The front emblem has two little locating pins on the back that fit into holes on the hood for positive alignment and to locate the black background piece. These will get in your way when you use fishing line to "cut" the emblem off, but if you change the cutting direction you can work around them and leave them intact. I can't remember if the rear emblem has pins or not.
I posted some pics a while back here (near the bottom of the thread)
http://www.scionxdforum.com/forum/sh...p?t=15&page=28 and you can see the emblems well enough to get the idea.
I can post up a better pic later if anyone is interested.
Hybrid Mode
