I did a little YouTube research and the use of heat and WD40 came up a few times so I went with that. Heat seemed to work the best and it didn't take long to remove the parts. Some were held on by double-sided tape which was the most difficult to remove, and the others were held on with what looked like the type of glue they used to attach things to magazines with.
I also gave the car a wash and saw it close up out on good light for the first time -- when I looked at it before buying it was dark and raining -- and discovered the paint is pretty awful. I knew it wasn't good so it wasn't a big surprise, but it is certainly worse than I expected.
I did do a quick light cut and polish by hand and it improved, but it doesn't look like it will ever look good like I hoped it might if I put some effort into cutting and polishing.
Next step was to see what it would take to remove the black paint from the wheels. They appear to have been simply painted over with spray paint, as I could remove some of the paint with my fingernail. Google AI suggested to start with acetone and amazingly that worked great and immediately removed the black paint which uncovered what looks like the original silver factory finish. It's going to take quite a while to do all the wheels though.
I also tried to reset the oil change due notification. I read that all I needed to do was turn the ignition on and press the accelerator and brake until the message came up that it had been reset, and this appeared to work but even after trying twice, the message keeps coming up again. Maybe I'm not doing it right, or maybe this has something to do with the fact that the instrument cluster was replaced by the previous owner.
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