Hi, all-
When I bought my 01 Hawk this past winter, an obvious defect was the piece of aluminum trim under the door. Here's a somewhat-confusing cropped photo of it as it sat on my work table.
The piece of wood behind it is what it was attached to on the camper. When I removed the vertical trim pieces on each side of this one, the wood and trim piece fell off. Not a great start.
As it turns out, though, the plywood was in decent condition and I was able to re-use it.
Here's a photo of some of the other trim pieces and my supplies:
For the first batch of trim I only had the sander and found the going very slow. The Aircraft Remover sped things up wonderfully, easily removing the paint on both sides of the trim. I spent quite a bit of time with the sander trying to get as much of the oxidation off as possible. The sandpaper gave the bare aluminum a pretty aggressive 'etch'. At first I thought that would be good for paint adhesion but then chickened out and used the 3M stripping pads to smooth it out a bit.
Aluminum oxidizes very quickly so I also used the stripping pads to clean off the oxidation that accumulated from the time I stripped the pieces until I was just about to paint them.
Before painting I also bathed the pieces in Krud Kutter Rust Remover for a half hour before washing and drying them just prior to painting.
The Rustoleum Aluminum Primer went on quite well as did the follow-up top-coats of Rustoleum Professional white. I painted them hanging from short lengths of coat-hanger wire, holding them up to paint and then hanging them from the edge of my work table to dry. Drying and re-coating times are short and one requirement is that you re-coat within an hour or wait 48 hours before re-coating.
At one point I considered replacing the trim rather than repainting it (before I found the Aircraft Remover). The trim is a product of Universal Molding. Their logo is stamped into the back of it and it's called a Bullseye trim. I wasn't able to find the right size online and saw reviews of frustrations with the long pieces of it arriving bent up in shipping. Also, I don't know how to go about matching up the screw-holes. By that time I was far enough along with mine to just keep going.
-OC
