Cheap Glider Trailer Refinish

Prepping and painting a fiberglass trailor is a bit different than an oxidized aluminum trailor and getting anytime out of the finish.

Likelyhe best bet is to powerwash the old paint, then decide if you do an etch, then convert before painting. That would be best, but costs more in time and money.
At least get the old loose stuff off and maybe Scotchbrite before painting.

On Sun, 30 Apr 2017 10:48:27 -0700, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot)
wrote:

Prepping and painting a fiberglass trailor is a bit different than an
oxidized aluminum trailor and getting anytime out of the finish.

When I repainted my alloy clad box trailer a couple of years ago I went
round the seams with a rotary wire brush to get rid of the gunge round
the rivet heads and down the edge of the sheet alloy overlaps and then
used an orbital sander to get loosely attached paint and orange-peel one
the panels. I think the trailer is about the same age as the A-series
Standard Libelle inside it: it had certainly been painted more than once
and not wonderfully well in at least one case.

This was followed by a coat of metal etch primer and two coats of semi-
gloss white polyurethane, applied 24 hours apart. Primer and paint all
applied with rollers. The result looks good and so far seems to be
shrugging off algae and roosting bird detritus.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Sounds great, good job. As to the rotary brush, I have heard that it should be brass to prevent steel doing a galvanic number on the aluminum (dissimilar metal corrosion) if you leave any ferrous metal behind.
Thus my comment about using Scotchbrite.

On Sun, 30 Apr 2017 12:53:43 -0700, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot)
wrote:

Sounds great, good job. As to the rotary brush, I have heard that it
should be brass to prevent steel doing a galvanic number on the aluminum
(dissimilar metal corrosion) if you leave any ferrous metal behind.
Thus my comment about using Scotchbrite.

Good point. However, as pop rivets were used to join the panels on my
trailer, and they almost always have steel cores, THAT damage was
probably done decades ago....


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

FWIW, Scotch Brite on a grinding wheel (as opposed to manually scrubbing with square pads) works really well.

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