I've been wondering if Airstream intended the blue stripe to have any texture or if I'm looking at one of the worse examples of orange peel I've ever seen?
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1975 Argosy 28 "Argosy"
1979 Excella 500 31 "Betsy"
1992 Lincoln Mk 7 LSC
2003 Dodge 2500 Cummins "TowHog"
"Lucy Loosehair" the cat - Airstream mascot
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My '77 Excella 50 had a smooth vinyl wide stripe. Maybe the PO had theirs fade out or crack so they removed it and used paint.
__________________ Craig
AIR #0078
'01 2500hd ext. cab, 8.1 litre gas, 5 sp. Allison auto
3.73 rear end
Mag-Hytec rear diff cover
Amsoil Dual by-pass oil filtration system
Amsoil synthetics all around
265 watt AM Solar, Inc. system
Maybe instead of washing each year they painted. I think that is what happened to the inside of my Flying Cloud. Paint is thicker than the aluminum in places.
Our 79 Excella 500 had a blue plastic stripe and it wasn't bumpy like yours, it was smooth. It had two light blue stripes on the solid blue that ran all the way around about an inch from the top and the bottom. They were one very thin line and one a little bigger that ran parallel to each other.
I have a 78 Argosy with the wide brown stripe around the middle. I sanded and repainted that stripe five times and still got the ripple effect. I know this Argosy can be painted because I have painted almost all the exterior myself. It's just the stripe that turned out, shall we say, not smooth. Used good wax and the Cyclo to make it look as good as it possibly can. Not too bad now and I am probably the only one who notices it. Not much help for your problem is it? The stripe did look better with the new vinyl insert outlining it.
My guess it that it has been painted. One clue is the paint on the rub rails that surround the blue band.
My 78 Excella has a blue band that is vinyl clad aluminum. When I stripped the exterior, I got stripper on the vinyl clad. (dumb thing to do). The stripper stripped some of the clearcoat off the vinyl and left a... well... mess. I ended up painting. But first I gently sanded to even out the mess and then painted with Rustoleum undercoat, sanded, painted with Rustoleum Royal Blue which is a perfect match. Here are some photos of the process and the result.
If you choose this route, remove the Excella 500 logo before starting the work. While it is off, polish it and put it back on once the painting is done. The last picture shows some of the dimpling caused by my attempt to clean off the clearcoat which I aborted when I realized I was creating a bigger problem. The gentle sanding helped to smooth out the dimpling and over time, it has improved. I painted the belt in 2002 and it still looks good.
Many thanks for the answers. I did some poking around in the corners, and it's definitely painted. I don't see any evidence that there's another layer under it. Oh, boy, I'm coming up with SO MANY ways to spend my poor tax return.
This trailer spent ten years in the desert in Arizona and then six years in a barn in Michigan, and now it's had a year in soggy southeast Georgia.
Resolved, I am, to strip the stripe and repaint it. Wonder how it would look in hunter green? Wonder if I can find the inserts in green?
Lamar
__________________
1975 Argosy 28 "Argosy"
1979 Excella 500 31 "Betsy"
1992 Lincoln Mk 7 LSC
2003 Dodge 2500 Cummins "TowHog"
"Lucy Loosehair" the cat - Airstream mascot
Klaatu barada nikto
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