EMAIL: Pros@masterpaintguard.com
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Our Airstream is a 25-foot 2003 Classic. Over the years we’ve taken it to 49 States (sorry, Hawaii, we’ll see you someday) and several Canadian provinces. Airstreams don’t have odometers, but we’ve probably done more than 100,000 miles of towing. Our trailer has been heavily used and abused as we’ve explored every environment in North America.
Baking heat in the Arizona and Nevada deserts… Salt air along the Florida and Oregon coasts… The inexcusable oily sludge of the Alaska Highway near Destruction Bay in the Yukon Territory, freezing snow in Idaho and Utah, and perhaps most damaging of all, the corrosive salty roads in those snowy areas.
Our trailer is wrapped with aluminum, a metal that has been described as durable but delicate. Aluminum is what makes an Airstream an Airstream, right? Although aluminum resists oxidation, it can be easily be damaged and is vulnerable to corrosion.
If you look at the truly vintage Airstreams, those trailers received no protective coating on their aluminum panels whatsoever. They were shiny silver when they rolled out of the factory, and then exposure to the elements immediately started deteriorating that metal.
That’s why most vintage Airstreams have a cloudy and dull appearance – the aluminum has been compromised. Now, some people polish vintage Airstreams to be shiny again, but that’s an extremely expensive labor intensive process – and once they are polished, they immediately begin to deteriorate! In a year or so, they start looking cloudy all over again.
So back in 1963 Airstream started offering clearcoated aluminum panels, and it became standard for all Airstreams the next year. Clearcoat offers a thin layer of protection for the aluminum against the elements.
But what we discovered with our trailer, unfortunately, is that clearcoat is porous and leaves the trailer vulnerable to corrosion. Anywhere on the trailer where dissimilar metals are touching, there is a strong risk of corrosion. We’ve had so-called filiform corrosion in several places on our trailer. We’ve also had places where the clearcoat was compromised and corrosion developed directly on the aluminum panel.
[pullquote]While clearcoat is better than nothing, it’s also a 1960s-era technology. It’s kind of like playing pro football with a leather helmet.[/pullquote] Clearcoat is thin, it’s weak, it’s somewhat porous, and over time it will lead to major headaches.
That brings us to the modern era and nano ceramic coatings. Now if you have any exposure to the classic car scene, you have probably already heard about ceramic. In recent years all the classic and collectible car guys have been getting their valuable cars ceramic coated. But until now, this technology has been mostly confined to smaller vehicles like cars. No one had really tackled RVs and especially Airstream trailers.
So for the past couple of years, Vinnie Lamica at Vinnie’s Northbay Airstream Repair in California has been telling me about this new ceramic coating they have been developing for Airstream and RV applications.
Ceramic coating is a modern nanotechnology that works on a microscopic level. How small is a nanometer? A nanometer is ONE-BILLIONTH of a meter. A nano ceramic coating is scientifically formulated to penetrate and fill microscopic imperfections in clearcoat. It fills gaps in the top range of the nanoscale, and provides a strong layer of protection. It forms a hard surface, like nearly as hard as solid quartz.
Apparently there is a strength scale for this stuff that rates hardness from 1H to 9H. Clearcoat would get a 2H or 3H on the hardness scale. This new ceramic coating for Airstreams is a 9H (top of the scale).
9H ceramic coating works by bonding with the existing surface to form a protective nanoceramic shield on the surface. It’s invisible to the naked eye, but when you touch it you can feel it, and it has some very interesting properties.
When I was at Vinnie’s, I had the chance to meet Bryan Boe of Master Paint Guard. Bryan has had a lot of experience working with ceramic and cars. He has also polished vintage Airstreams. He’s been working for the past couple of years to help develop this new formula for Airstream and RV applications.
So here’s how the process worked on our trailer at Vinnie’s. The entire application takes several days and is conducted indoors.
On the first day, the trailer exterior receives a thoroughly detailed cleaning. Then we moved it inside the shop. Two technicians immediately started working with buffers on the clearcoat. The goal was to buff smooth any imperfections in clearcoat that had developed over the past 17 years of use and abuse. [pullquote]The entire trailer clearcoat was buffed.[/pullquote]
What we discovered was that some light scratches and flaws in the clearcoat could be removed. However we have some areas on our trailer that simply can’t be fixed. This is why (spoiler alert) if you have an Airstream you care about preserving, you really need to consider having this ceramic done – once the clearcoat is compromised by corrosion, it’s possible for your trailer to be irreparably damaged – and once it’s damaged, at that point the only true “fix” is panel replacement which is enormously expensive.
Anyway, during the buffing we had some decisions to make. Our trailer came from the factory with blue pinstriping and also “Classic” logos on the side and rear. Of course we added some Long Long Honeymoon logos on our front and rear windows. The pinstriping was damaged and flaking off in several sections. We needed to either replace it, or remove it entirely. We chose to remove it.
Although I like the vintage look of the pinstriping, here’s the deal with ceramic. Once you have ceramic coated a section of the trailer, that section is pretty much permanent and cannot be changed. So we could’ve applied fresh new pinstriping on our trailer and ceramic coated it, but that would have been a permanent commitment to the pinstriping.
With the Classic and Long Long Honeymoon logos it was the same decision. So we decided to just remove all the logos and ceramic the hard surfaces. We can always add pinstriping and logos onto the ceramic at a later date if we so choose.
Another weird portion of our trailer concerns the spot of the original Thor sticker next to the door. For a couple of years, Airstream’s parent company Thor put stickers on the trailers with glue that actually ruined the clearcoat and caused filiform corrosion. A lot of Airstreams in the early-2000s era were affected by this problem. Previously our solution was to remove the original sticker and replace it with a Long Long Honeymoon sticker. That seemed to work in that it stopped the corrosion from advancing.
For the ceramic treatment, we decided to remove the LOLOHO sticker and try to repair that area. Unfortunately there is a ghost where the Thor sticker actually REMOVED the clearcoat off the trailer. And the corrosion cannot be fully buffed out without damaging the aluminum. There is no easy fix for this problem – we will just put another Long Long Honeymoon sticker over the ghost.
Once the trailer was stripped clean and the clearcoat buffed, it was time to apply the ceramic coating. This is a time consuming process. The ceramic can be sprayed or hand applied. I think Bryan favors hand application.
Every hard surface on the trailer gets the ceramic. That includes window exteriors and wheels. The only surface that is not covered is the stainless steel rock guards.
[pullquote]This ceramic coating is different from what you might find in a local car shop. [/pullquote]This formula has been developed over the past couple of years here in the United States (not in China, as is the case with many competitor coatings). Bryan says it’s very similar to what the US military uses to protect Apache helicopters that are deployed overseas. On the 1 to 9 hardness scale, it would rank a 16!
But not only is this formula extremely hard, Bryan applies three different layers of protection to the trailer. The first two layers are thick and bond to the clearcoat, while the third layer is thinner and goes on top of the ceramic. These layers form a permanent hard “nanoshield” shell on top of the aluminum and clearcoat. At the moment we’re calling it RV Nanoshield.
So once the third and final coat of ceramic had dried, it was time to bring our trailer back out into the elements for the first big reveal. The results of the work speak for themselves. Our Airstream looks better now than it has probably then any time we’ve owned it. During the first few days after leaving Vinnie’s, we had several people stop and ask us if it was new.
But in the weeks after receiving the ceramic, we didn’t baby the trailer. We took it directly into several harsh environments – the Alabama Hills area of California. Death Valley. The desert near Saguaro, and the dusty terrain of Quartzsite. We towed more than 2000 miles.
Once in an Arizona RV park, we decided to test clean one single panel. So far, so good.
Finally it was time for the first thorough cleaning after the ceramic treatment. We decided to do what we usually do once or twice a year – we broke out the pressure washer, some soft bristle brushes and microfiber towels, and some Dawn dish detergent.
The trailer is clearly a lot easier to clean and maintain than it was before. The hydrophobic properties of the ceramic are obvious. Dirt and dust just lifts right off of the surface. We even had a couple of spots where tree sap had fallen onto the surface. This stuff is usually quite sticky and takes a lot of work to remove. It easily came right off.
And by the way, our trailer will never need to be waxed ever again. The coating is permanent.
[pullquote]So we now have confidence that the aluminum is now protected for the long term.[/pullquote] Of course we have only had the coating for a short time, but I talked to Vinnie about his impressions of RV Nanoshield. I’ve known Vinnie for a decade. Before he was the Airstream Whisperer, Vinnie had a career with Volvo and Mercedes. I trust his opinion.
What about cost? Well, I hesitate to quote an exact cost because it’s going to be a bit different depending on the size and condition of your RV. If you want this sort of protection for your RV, I encourage you to reach out to Vinnie and Bryan for the latest details.
For our trailer, it costs about $4000. At first glance, that seems like a lot of money – and it is a lot of money. But when you look at the cost of new Airstreams, the Classics now have a MSRP of $176,000. This cost is a small fraction of the trailer. And also consider the price of panel replacement – it costs at least $3000 to replace a small Airstream panel; the large body panels cost more like $8000 to replace.
Now if you haven’t noticed, I’m a “buy and hold” type of person. I try to buy quality products that will last, and take care of them. I feel like this was a great upgrade for our trailer, and I will be reporting back in the future to let you know how it’s going.
So there you have it – the full scoop on our new ceramic coating.
Code name: RV NANOSHIELD!