Quote:
Originally Posted by ngcarper
Hey folks! Glad to be a part of this group. Really need some advice. I have an '88 25' Sovereign that has never been touched outside.
As I'm a 63-yr-old female, am considering hiring this out. Would love to find someone fairly close to Missouri but guess I could drive it most anywhere if they gave great service.
Really look forward to your ideas! Thanks so much! |
Hi NG,
As a 64.5 year old male - I think it's a good idea to hire it out, unless one is a glutton for punishment!
Some of the vintage Airstreamers here in CA have used is the truck services who polish the shiny tanker trailers you see in the 18-wheeler rigs, & those are all over the country & often/usually associated with truck stops & other services for the truckers.
I've not used one personally, since so far we're keeping our `60 Avion T20 with it's natural patina, so I can't speak to it - other than in talking with several AS owners who used them to great effect, & according to them it lasts longer than the shines done by the "cyclo" machines so popular with the AS resto shops.
Apparently the truck polishers use huge 36"-48" buffing wheels on edge & polish vertically, giving a more consistent shine. While I'm sure that the cyclo fanatics will chime in that it cannot work well without leaving lines - but I do know that in auto concours in which I judge, that we do try to do all final polishing, waxing & wipe-downs etc. in a line horizontally to fool the eye in the sun. The 18-wheeler tankers & AS's are taller than cars, so they do it vertically, again to fool the eye. I can also say that upon close inspection of the one guy's 63 AS, I could see no lines from the vertical polishing & buffing at all.
One suggestion from the guy with the 63 was to remove all the accessories like antennas, vent caps, latches, hold-downs, handles, etc. before sending it to them to polish, just to be safe & to get a good polish (18-wheel tankers don't have those types of obstructions), as you would probably do with a cyclo job too. Then those smaller parts can also be more easily hand polished as needed off of the trailer.
So being far away, you may want to hire somebody to do that removal/polishing/remounting of the small parts for you as well.
The guy also said that it was about 1/2 the cost for their polishing job, than what the resto shops are charging for their cyclo jobs, & it typically lasted several years without any repeat hand nor buffer polishing. He had a finish spray applied product he used in between to keep it nice by hand wipe-down, but I can't recall it's name now (half-zymers at 64! ;-).
Cheers!
Tom
///////
Linear Mode
