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mscott · 07-08-2007, 05:52 PM

The entire curb side of my 61 simply will not shine. Other areas of my Safari shine fine although the entire trailer is unfortunately very pitted I have made progress. It appears I have two different types of alu on this trailer. The curb side is cloudy and I can not get it to shine. I use Nuvite and have coumpounded in various areas with combinations of f9, f7, c and s to try to get the pits and cloudyness out. The pits are smoothed out but the coudiness remains. I've used the cyclo too. One area I absolutely went after with f9, then f7, then c and s and now I have this 8" round hasey spot; if I try to use any polish on it now it just turns black immediately and the only way to get it off is to use mineral spirits. Has anyone had any experience with this?

LI Pets · 07-08-2007, 06:02 PM

The black is just loose alum, you can use mineral sprits, but soap and water works the same if not better.

It could be you've gone thru the top layer of the T3, if so you're out of luck.

Others will add more comments I'm sure

dwightdi · 07-08-2007, 07:49 PM

The original aluminum skin was made from "Alclad". Alclad is a laminated product with 2024 as the core material and a coating of pure aluminum on both sides. The pure aluminum polishes great but will eventually pit, if the corrosion gets bad enough. Then, if you compound too hard to remove the pits, you can wear thru into the 2024 which does not polish so well. If that has happened, there is no way of fixing it, short of replacing the segments.

InsideOut · 07-08-2007, 09:39 PM

Sounds like a good mystery to check out at the RMVAC...maybe something was overdone by the previous polishers. Wasn't Louie wanting them to go for a "matte finish" look? They may have gone through the Alclad trying to acheive that with sanding.

Herb will be able to tell...

Shari

mscott · 07-13-2007, 08:16 PM

Herb looked at it last year at the RMVAC rally and said he thought it would shine. His suggestion was to try compounding with S; so I did... but no improvement. For now I am going to give up on the curb side, I think the other sides will be much more responsive to my efforts. Thanks for the input!
Mike