SEMI transport truck pointers

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envious2014

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Hello everyone. I can use some help with a project thats coming up. I have a client that wants me to detail his frieghtliner semi and trailer. Now I have experience doing washes on these beasts but this is the first time I have been asked to detail one. he wants it lightly polished and waxed. Maybe buffed, just really wants to restore shine and protect.

Now I am very experienced in buffing paint on cars and polishing, i am experienced with a rotary , random orbital bigfoot 21 polisher, and have a flex polisher as well. Oh yeah another curve ball with this thing is that it just recently had a vinyl wrap removed from the thing and has some leftover adhesive that must be removed first. please any pointers on this project would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!! Feed back please.

I attached a pic too if that helps
 
By your description of it, it sounds like it needs completely reconditioned and not just lightly polished.

Sure, he wants to pay for a light polish but sounds like he needs a whole lot more.

I do a lot of commercial vehicles but don't have time right now as I'm on my way out the door.

I'll subscribe and help where I can as I get a little time.

Vegas Transplant is the forum guru on the big rigs. Hopefully he'll chime in and give you a hand.
 
Oh crap!! I just saw that you have a photo there...not sure how I missed that. That don't look too bad from afar.

Subscribed.
 
Removing adhesive residue can be very difficult. you need heat and solvent. Hopefully u can work in a warm space. Car pro also has a product. As for polishing I'd try a heavy duty one step with an abrasive. A rotary with a large foam pad may be faster.
 
well this is the customer who 's semi I already service. I posted it to show and give an idea of what I am working on. The one I need to work on I have not just looked at yet.
 
any advice you can give me would be great as far as products and machines to use. And had far can i take it before I do any damage as he wants the back trailer buffed.
 
You need to look at the one your going to be working on first off>

looking at the pics of the one you posted that you already service you should have a idea of what your working on.

most of those rigs are made of Aluminum and are uber thin (paint) and I mean thin........an AIO is in order.

I will say that Vegas Transplant has the most experience with the big stuff and I always look to guidance....he can help you a lot. Reach out to him Via pm......I'll send him one myself with a link to this thread. He has been on here the last few days......maybe he will chime in ( but I know he is on the road most of the time)

There are so many products that can be used and get very good results.....but if you let us know what you have to work with on hand we can help a little more.
 
I really only have traditional paint type products like Menzerna FG400 for cut and Sonax 3/6 polish. I also have some 3D detailing HD speed too. also sir what is AIO mean? Thanks again for the reply too
 
I just typed for over an hour with a very detailed reply on this stupid touch screen laptop, don't know what my pinky finger accidentally touched but it all just disappeared...gone...wanted to put my fist through the screen but didn't... sorry but it's bed time now. maybe i'll get back to it from my desktop tomorrow.
 
jesus dude Im sorry to hear that !! I personally hate computer tech stuff!! proud to be a laborer!!! but thanks for the effort hopefully we can touch base tomorrow sir. Thanks again !!!
 
Dave will hit you off proper on this one :props:
I remember his advice from a couple years ago on a not quite so similar vehicle.

Happy detailing...:buffing:
 
tuscarora dave said:
I just typed for over an hour with a very detailed reply on this stupid touch screen laptop, don't know what my pinky finger accidentally touched but it all just disappeared...gone...
Click to expand...


I HATE that when that happens....


When my replies are going to be long, detailed and important I try to type in MS Word and then copy and paste into the forum using the "Editor Mode" in vBulletin so you don't get all the hidden MS Word code via html.

I feel your pain.... Bill Clinton

I feel your paint... Mike Phillips


:D
 
OK, no longer tired, no longer angry...lol.. It happens. I'm still getting used to that Windows 8.1 OS and the whole touch screen keyboard from the EZ chair thing.

What I was typing was all about the different types of paints one could encounter on commercial vehicles like the ones you'll be working on.

A lot of these trailers and or boxes on these commercial vehicles are a basic aluminum and steel skeletal system (for lack of a better term) constructed of a top and bottom rail, usually heavy aluminum connected with bows across the top and beams down the sides on 24" centers. At the factory they typically use pre-painted aluminum panels 4" wide by however high and rivet these panels from beam to beam down the sides. Most all these trailers use bucked aluminum rivets that have no coating on them, so when you polish on the paint on these giants you get a lot of black coming off of the rivets smearing across the white paint on the pre-painted panels. It really helps to know going into a job like this, how to "control" or handle the black as you polish. The key here is to work in small enough sections so that you can "work wet", in other words, you need to do the polishing in your work section, working between and over all the rivets and have the polishing residue good and wet upon wipe up of the resulting mess. If you push on without wiping up the residue as you work, letting the black residue dry as you go, you'll have one heck of a time getting the black smears "OUT" of the white paint.

I choose my wording very carefully when I type about this stuff. Notice above that I chose the words "OUT" of the paint, and not "off" of the paint.

As you polish along you'll essentially be deep cleaning the paint, working a chemical "into" the paint as you go. Better said, you'll be working a chemical cleaner below the surface of the paint, or into the matrix of the paint, pulling out years of road grime, stains etc. and you'll also have the black from the rivets finding it's way below the surface of the paint. You need to wipe all this crud away while the cleaning solution (the chemical polish) is still wet or it re-stains.

More to come...
 
Let's talk a little about the paint used on the pre-painted panels. This paint is totally different than the paint you'll see used in automotive finishing.

These pre-painted panels are almost always painted with a DTM, or Direct To Metal paint of varying types. Some are 100% acrylic, some are Alkyd enamels, they are all very thin and they all degrade over time with the use of strong alkaline pre-treatments at truck washes. They also degrade in film thickness as a result of just being washed with the wash brush at the non-automatic washes like the mobile wash guys that often keep these trucks clean.

The Obsessive Compulsive Detailing school of thought needs to be squashed before going into working on these trailers. The truck itself is totally different> The trucks are usually either gelcoat, or are painted with something of a rough service paint such as Imron paint which can typically withstand lots of cutting and polishing.

The proof of the degradation of the DTM paint on trailers can really be seen after de-lettering one of these trailers. When you de-letter one of these trailers, you can clearly see that the paint that had been protected by the letters for years is often 3 to 4 times thicker in film build than the surrounding paint that had been pretreated and scrubbed against through its years of service.

Any abrasive compounds used on these trailers typically cuts through to the metal in just a few passes, especially when used with a rotary polisher. These paints when looked at up close are almost always "fractured" or for clarity, you'll typically see millions of fine cracks in the paint that look almost like random scratches all throughout the paint. Lots of dirt hides down in these millions of fine cracks. All you want to do is chemically clean this dirt out of the cracks and out of the matrix of the paint.

Shiny is a result of the pad working
against the paint, clean is a result of the chemical that's in the product and pad working itself in and out of the matrix of the paint essentially flushing the crud out from within the matrix of the paint. If the flushed out crud is allowed to dry on the surface before being wiped off, a percentage of that crud will reabsorb into the matrix of the paint.

More to come later but I have to get ready for work now.
 
hey boss thank you so much !! really good insight !! I took some pics of this thing that I will post now. I will say this. this thing is a real toilet!!!
 
here are some pics of this semi . its needs a lot of love really bad. it is very dull all over and very very chalky!!!
 
Your Flex 3401 is going to be the machine to use on this project. You'll want to aim for clean and shiny only, putting any thoughts of correction out of your mind completely. If you don't heed this particular piece of advice and go after this paint with an abrasive compound, you'll likely learn a lesson that you won't soon forget.

I've done a lot of work on these panels, tested the limits of the paint, different machines and many different types of products. The absolute quickest performing product I've found to achieve clean and shiny on these trailers is 3D International Deep Blue Metal Polish.

I know it's not sold here at AGO and I rarely mention products not sold here but it is the magic on these pre-painted panels and rivets alike, but will need to be followed by an LSP of your choice. This stuff works so fast that it's honestly worth following it with a wipe on walk away sealant such as Blackfire Crystal Seal, Optimum Opti-Seal or Ultima's Paint Guard Plus. The WOWA application is the fastest way to go.

Duragloss #501 Marine and RV polish is a close second to the 3D metal polish on these and it has it's own durable sealant right in the product.

#501 has very good cleaning ability for working on these trailers but doesn't work as fast at the non abrasive metal polish mentioned above, plus you have the light abrasive in the #501 to contend with. The abrasive in #501 is light but it does take things from a super easy no brainer process of buff, wipe and move on to a process that requires some abrasive break down time and buffing time control from one work section to the next because it doesn't deep clean quite as fast, and the included sealant in the product tends to want to seal in the black that's coming off of the rivets. The work and wipe off while still wet process becomes more critical when working with #501 and add in the need for more process control and abrasive breakdown time, there's a steeper learning curve when working with this product but it does work well once you dial in your process.

You'll be surprised at how inefficient the use of traditional automotive compounds and polishes can be when working on these trailers. For one, they cut too much and second off, their chemical cleaning ability is all wrong for the type of crud you find embedded into the matrix of these pre-painted panels.

I think a lot of the crud that gets in and on these trailers has a good percentage of metal tarnish in it, both from it's own metal structure, and from the high percentage of metal rolling down the highway. There's like a water, grease, mud, metal, rubber slurry splashing around from one big rig to the next during wet highway driving conditions. The fact that these rigs don't have a protective clear coat protecting the paint like cars do, just invites all this slop to absorb into the paint on these rigs.

Thoughts? Questions?
 
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