[a/s] Exterior care of A/S

[Roy Lashway <rlashway@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Several questions were asked recently about care of the contemporary 
airstream skins and the following messages from the past  I found in my 
files and send it on.
===========
Subject:     [a/s] Shining the blimp
Sent:        6/12/19 9:33 PM
From:        per.hamnqvist@airstream.net


This weekend I tried two products from Jim and Sharon (Weston): a dry 
wash and the
microseal. Only one word is appropriate here: awesome.

We bought our 31ft '98 Excella last summer. I cleaned it twice last year.
Once after I just bought it. The second time I also used Walbernize, the
product recommended by Airstream. As per recommendations from this list, I
used Dawn.

I was not quite happy with the results. But as a new A/S owner, I really 
had
nothing to compare with. I had areas of the trailer surface that had 
lightly
colored drop marks on darker background. I could not get that stuff off 
and
figured it was some sort of manufacturing defect coupled with the trailer 
having received a acid sun shower.

This weekend, I hand washed it again. Jim told me I should try some of 
that
dry cleaner. The results were nothing short of breathtaking. The dirt came
off in all places and underneath was beatiful clean skin. Instead of spot
cleaning, I ended up hand cleaning the entire unit, including the roof. 
Took
me 1 1/2 day and plenty of towels; I do not yet own a drum polisher so I
imagine the cleaning job would have been faster with one. Before the 
cleaning,
the surface was sort of rough. Afterwards, it was like silk. 

Then I applied the Microseal. Wow. It was so slick that I almost lost the
bottle from the roof on what appeared to a level surface. 

I used up nearly a full quart of dry cleaner and about a half a bottle of
microseal. I used tons of towels during the dry cleaning because of all 
the
dirt it got off.
--------
The dry cleaner looks like a creamy liquid, very similar in texture to 
Walbernize.
I applied with a terry cloth, after I had pre-cleaned it with Dawn. The 
trailer
was dry when I applied this product. I put some on the terry cloth, 
rubbed in a
circular motion to work away stains and water running marks. I then let 
it haze
over which was rather quick. I then wiped it off with a dry terry cloth.

The hard part is working the liquid to get off the stains from the 
clearcoat. I
say hard, not because you have to cover the same surface N times, but a 
31ft unit
has a lot of surface, if you know what I mean, and not all of it is easy 
to reach
from the ground. The roof took a lot of time, because I had to move the 
ladder
around. Let me put this into some perspective. It was about as hard to 
apply this
product as it is to polish classic turtle wax off your truck -- you've 
got to work
it, basically.

The microseal is very similar to the dry cleaner in texture. Same method 
for
putting it on. Once the trailer had been cleaned off, it was very easy to 
apply
the microseal. There was very little resistance from dirt on the 
clearcoat, so
the towel moved quickly. Once it hazed over, it was easiy to wipe off. It 
only
took a few hours to apply microseal.

The stone guards were a bit different, in that no matter how clean I got 
them,
they kept giving off pitch black silt with the cleaner. I decided to stop 
before
I cleaned my way through the stone guards. I would recommend that you 
clean them
last on a towel, because you'll have to put it in the "dirty pile" after 
each
stone guard. Do not attempt to clean the inner door frame, even though it 
looks
tempting. I tried and it just turned black and the more I rubbed, the 
worse it
got.
Regards,
>Per


Roy Lashway
'78 Argosy,'56 Bubble
rlashway@zianet.com