Airstream Trailer Polishing Project                                                            Updated 7/03

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Airstream Trailer Globetrotter 1964            The following is our experiences with

Clear Coat Removal, Sealing the seams, and Polishing

Yes you can get a mirror shine!

Before

After

The door is not polished.  To the rear of the door is polished. Quite a difference!

Here we have just taken out the corrosion around the pits but we still have to bring it to the mirror finish. Polishing is a several stage process.
The left side of the picture looked pretty much like the right side when we began.

Here it is in all its "shinyness"

Here is a close up of the filiform corrosion shown above on the right hand side of the left picture. 
With compounding you can removed most or all of this corrosion.

 Filiform corrosion is most often seen in a failing paint (or clear coat) over aluminum. Little "worm trails" form as the oxidation works its way under the paint.

NASA's page has a nice explaining filiform corrosion.  http://corrosion.ksc.nasa.gov/html/filicor.htm

Starting sometime in the '60's Airstream started offering a clear coat as an option. Filiform corrosion starts under that coating. Ours was a lacquer based clear coat but over the years Airstream has used different products for clear coat. Many Airstreams had a clear coat at some time in their life so you may be faced with polishing out this type of corrosion.

The following pages are the steps we did to decide how to polish the trailer, prepare the trailer, polish and detail it.  These are offered only to help provide you with some ideas and a starting place.  Please if you see something that you think is a bad idea let me know.  Also if you have suggestions or tips I would love to hear them!  Mail info to: Arlen & Shirley:

There are many good ways to polish - all are a lot of work.  If you do it wrong you can damage the aluminum.  Done right you can get a wonderful mirror shine.

I am NOT an expert on polishing but I am learning a few tips and techniques as I go that I thought I would share. 

We have tried polishing our 1947 Luscombe, a classic bare aluminum airplane, for years.  We would start and give up after just doing a little.  We used the cyclo polisher with the cyclo "wool" pads.  The Swift techniques using cotton sweatshirt material has made all the difference - I have polished more of the trailer in a week than I ever did on the airplane.  When the trailer is done I will have to start on the airplane.

I hope the following pages will give you a few tips so you will be inspired to start this transformation process. . .

The basic polishing steps are:

  1. Prepare the trailer for polishing - remove the clear coat and clean the seams and the rest of the trailer.
  2. Remove oxidation, filiform and some scratches with a slow speed drill,  a wool bonnet and Nuvite Polish (AKA Compounding).
  3. Remove the swirls/scratches left by compounding with a Cyclo random orbital polisher with 100% cotton sweatshirt material covering the pads.  Use Nuvite polish.
  4. Polish to a mirror shine using a Cyclo polisher with 100% cotton sweatshirt material covering the pads.  Use Nuvite "S" polish.
  5. Cleanup any black residue (especially around the rivets) with Glass Wax.

For details see the following pages

Plan-Prepare Polishing Details Summary Other Links