Some General Tips:
 | Let your mantra be - Clean , Clean, Clean! Any particle left on the trailer, on the cloths, that gets in the polish WILL scratch! Clean the area you are going to polish just before you begin. Keep all your equipment clean and away from the ground! |
| Don't polish in the Sun You will get hot and tired but more importantly the polish residue will harden and it just does not work well. Some polishes might be OK in the sun (I don't know) but I know that Nuvite and Rolite are not. Polish in the cool of the morning, on a cloudy day or if you are lucky enough inside. A few times I have gotten some "tea" colored stains or milky white stains when I polished near the curves on the roof in with the sun directly on the skin (skin was still not hot). I found I could remove these if I waited until the sun was not on the skin and the skin was cool. Hand polishing with S on the cloth seems to work well. I spread the S with the cyclo just until the stained area was covered with black then removed the polish with the sweatshirt material by hand (you might have to do this twice). Follow with a cyclo with new sweatshirt material and no polish to remove and smooth the last of the polish if you need to. I only had to do this on a couple of places. |
| Keep the cord on the machines away from the polished trailer - IT will
scratch. You can polish those scratches out but it is better not to make
them in the first place. |
| Polish What polish you start with will depend on how oxidized your trailer is and how perfect you want it to be when you are done. We have decided on our trailer to try for about a 9 (or a little more). After all it is a trailer and it will always get road spray. We plan to use it not just look at it. The amount of work seems to be logarithmic . . If getting a part of the trailer to an 8 takes one hour, a 9 takes 10 hours and a perfect 10 would take 100 hours - well maybe not quite but it seems that way. The aluminum on different parts of our trailer is not the same. The curved roof panels polished different than the slab sides, the curved lower sections polished different as well. It took some experimentation to figure out what procedure to use on each part. |
| PROPER ABRASIVES TO USE TO CLEAN MATERIALS It is important to clean aluminum with abrasives that will not harm the aluminum or cause dissimilar metal (galvanic) corrosion. See these reference to start your research |