Today was our Golf Tournament, so I was up and out the door by 5:45am. My office had all agreed to meet at 6am in order to be ready for the 7am check in. Everything worked like clockwork and the tournament was a huge success. By 2:30pm the tournament was over, the trophy’s and prizes handed out and we had almost everything packed up. By 3:30pm, we were back at the office and had unloaded everything, counted cash, checked emails and managed any issues that needed to be dealt with. We were closing early after an already long day and I was on my way to Lowes.
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| Diamond Brite, Truck Box Polish |
Lowes was my first stop on my way home. I wanted to find that metal box polish. I couldn’t remember the name, but I knew where to look. I found it right away, duh, it’s called “Truck Box Polish”. They had several bottles and I figured I would buy 3 to start and either come buy more, or return one. The bottles were small and the product seemed very watery. It had separated into two parts a heavier white part and what looked like water on top. With a good shake it blended together, but quickly separated again. I started to wonder, how good could this stuff really be? Now I really wanted to get home and work on the trailer.
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| Reflection after uing Truck Box Polish! |
With a quick stop at Starbucks to return coffee containers from the tournament, I was home in no time. I grabbed a bite to eat, let the chickens out, gathered the two eggs, changed into my trailer shorts (torn at the cuff with a few splatters of paint) and I was ready to try out Truck Box Polish.
I squirted a little polish on the buffer and buffed a spot for a several minutes. The black tarnish immediately started to form and I could see my reflection emerge. I stopped and got a bucket of Orvis soapy water and a rag to wash off the blackened tarnish. I was really impressed and could tell this product was really going to shine up the trailer. I just need to remove all the heavy grime, paint residue and tar stains off first.
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| Scrubbing with Goof Off and ready to use an SOS soap pad. |
What I really needed to be doing was scrubbing the roof and getting all the above mentioned grime off. I grabbed my steel wool and the gallon of Goof Off and climbed up the ladder and started scrubbing. The Goof Off cut the tar stains immediately and with a little elbow grease I was able to scrub off a nice section of the roof. I then had to switch to an SOS soap pad to cut the Goof Off and tar. This left me with a nice section of metal, but it still has a paint-like primer feel to it, which comes off with the soap pad and a lot of scrubbing. Within an hour I had a good section done.
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| Clean roof just needs a little scrubbing to shine up. |
By far the most time consuming part is cleaning the riveted trim, which still has sections with paint, silicone and grime incrusted on it. It all comes clean; you just have to scrape around all the rivets, use paint stripper, steel wool and the edge of a putty knife to get it done. With time and effort the trim comes clean and looks amazing and it’s actually quite gratifying to set your mind on a cleaning a section and watching the shine reemerge.
Oh, how sad does that sound? I enjoyed spending my Friday night alone make metal shine.
It was starting to get dark and I was really getting tired, so I started to clean up. I was very excited for tomorrow and finishing up the roof and trim, at least that would be my goal. I still have more work on the front and rear of the trailer as well as the entire right side. There is plenty to do and I'm in no hurry.
I forgot to mention yesterday, that on my birthday the title to the trailer arrived; what a nice Birthday gift.
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| Bergman tail light with lic |
With the light and my energy level fading, I still had trailer on my brain, so I decided to go online and see if I could find tail lights for the trailer. When I was removing them, the center light was starting to crumble and it had little chance of being saved. It was so badly faded and when I removed it and set it down, it just came apart. I googled vintage trailer parts and found several sites and after looking at couple I found VintageCampers.com. Among their selection of tail lights was a Bargman tail ligh with license plate lens, they only had one, so I bought it. The one I had on the trailer was what they call a wedding cake style with two tiers. This one only has one tier but it would matches the two outer tail lights. I found the two tier wedding cake style on another site, but the bolt pattern doesn't match up, so I thought I would buy this for now and keep my eyes open. Now, I just need to find the two outer tail lights so they will look new and fresh. If I can't them I can work with what I have until I can find them and in the morning I can call Vintage Campers and see if they might know where I can find them.
So, dispite spending my Friday night alone make metal trim shine, I had a great day. Spending a little time with the trailer is great therapy.
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