Thor Forums

[blw2]

re-awakened an old thread here.....
I was in on the original conversation, and can give an update of sorts.

So i uses an acrylic floor polish and it looked great, jaw dropping really. It lasted a relatively short time....6 months maybe. I feel like it would have continued to shine if I would have kept after it with follow-up maintenance coats every couple months. It never did peel...just slowly lot the shine.

Long time later the rig was really looking bad, especially the nose cone.
I did a really quick rush job on the overhang nose cone with several rattle cans of clear automotive laquer. Looked less than perfect but only because the shotty job I did. From even just a short distance away it looked good. Held up for quite a long time too. This was a couple years ago now I think...I've kinda lost track.

It still has a little shine but it's not what I would call looking great anymore. Still, I've thought several times about getting a sprayer and doing a cobbled-up shadetree clearcoat job over the whole rig.

I little while back I'd read about a paint additive product called pentrol. Maybe 3 months ago I put a couple coats on the rig. Not as ja dropping as the floor polish...but that's mainly because I didn't prep as well + it's faded a lot worse now. Regardless, very similar results to the floor polish. The only real problem is that some of the mottled discoloration is showing through...it's shiny but looks bad. I'm not sure if better prep would have really helped since its so far gone. At least the rig doesn't look quite as bad. Seems like penetrol achieves full shine after about 2 coats and doesn't progressively get better and better with each coat like the floor polish.... I think because it goes on thicker.

More recently I've been researching on youtube about electric cars and have stumbled onto a few guys doing the vinyl wrap on these cars. It really has my wheels turning that IF I had more time I might look into just doing that to the RV...a DIY job. It looks like it would probably be relatively easy over most of the RV since it's just large flat surfaces.

Anyway, in my opinion the only real fix is paint. Probably just a clearcoat if you do it before the fading gets too bad, otherwise probably a full paint job if you want a rig that looks 'new' for a long time. I'm convinced that this junk they build with will not hold up with full exposure, and there's no easy fix.