However, eventually the sun's rays takes it's toll on the lacquer and it fails. Then the elements of nature take over and slowly oxidize the aluminum. In order to polish an Airstream back to it's original shine, you need to first strip the clear coat and then buff the aluminum with various grits of polish until it's smoothed to a mirror shine.
That's the theory anyway.
There are lots of videos online about polishing and there seems to be different tricks of the trade. I went with the Nuvite NuShine process... a series of three polishes ranging from coarse to fine.
My research of the process indicated that a good estimate for the required effort is 10 hours per linear foot of trailer. Since the Safari 22 is 19 feet long, that means after 190 hours I should be finished.
190 hours? That's about a month of 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, work weeks! Surely that couldn't be correct... could it?
You know, I think that could be a good estimate, if you were to really get every nook and cranny, every rivet, every surface to shine like new. If you were to pay someone to do it, I bet it would be a $3,000+ proposition. It's that much work.
Well, over several weekends I was able to get through the coarse and medium grit courses of polish and I think it looked much better. It's not perfect but it's much improved.
Here's before...
And here's after... although it still needs a lot of work.
You might notice that I also replaced the AIRSTREAM logo plates on the front and back. That was a huge improvement too. Hopefully they will hold up to the weather.
Now the trailer is safely tucked into it's RV storage spot and I've got my driveway back for a little while.
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