As I chip away at freshening up Miranda’s exterior, I’ve come to accept that part of the job is going to be re-striping her. That’s RV parlance for removing all the decals and putting on new ones. Funny that that should sound like such a small job, but it’s a real bitch. Frankly, I don’t get why RV graphics aren’t just painted on. I’m not convinced that the hassle of apply vinyl neatly is any less than that of programming a graphic into a spray painter.

Today, I began the onerous task of de-striping the rig. Most of the teal stuff comes off easily with a high pressure spray, but the rest won’t be so easy. The goal here is to get a completely white rig that I will then buff to a smooth and hopefully uniform finish. I have a couple of ideas for how I will be re-striping, but that’s not a priority right now.

peeling stripes on the front end

part of the teal came off easily with a stream of high pressure water

bottom stripes are all gone, but notice the grey line: that’s adhesive. It’ll take a buffer to get rid of that.

While I had the hose out, I also took the time to Poli Ox the bottom half of the rig, which was the most stained and battered. This was just a light pass with a soft cloth. I will be doing a thorough going over the rig with a buffer later.

I considered these lines to be stains; no amount of elbow grease would lighten them

black lines are GONE!!! Poli Ox is awesome!

top half was scrubbed with a vehicle detergent and rinsed with high pressure water; bottom half was lightly rubbed with Poli Ox and rinsed with a gentle mist

The most onerous part of the afternoon was picking up all the bits of striping that blew into the yard. I’m sure I didn’t get it all and that I’ll be picking up pieces into the fall!

This once over with the Polix Ox helped me set some spending priorities. The first is going to be resealing all my seams. That’s going to be a job and a half since it will involve removing all the aluminum capping, scraping it and the rig clean, and then applying the Dicor.