40 ft Monster RV aka 'Flying Dutchman'

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This was, by far...the biggest RV we ever did...it was about the same as doing a wash and wax on a yacht! 40 ft long....12 1/2 ft tall...it was a beast...but she turned out nice :xyxthumbs:

Another job we got via 'word of mouth'...this big baby just got back from a trip ALL the way from Az to New England and back. The Lexus we did later that week was pretty bug ridden, but nothing compaired to this tour bus size giant.

As I said it was just a wash and wax, but at 40 ft this was still a 6 hr plus job for the 2 of us with 2 DA's goin. It was an 07' and all things considered, in pretty good shape. Coulda surely used some scratch removal..but for at least they were keeping it maintained :).

The RV was a Dutch Star:

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BUT me being me I couldn't let it just stay at that. Since this thing was about the size of a pirate ship I had to rename it the Flying Dutchman like from the movie Pirates of the Caribbian. Not only because of its size but...because the weather we were doing this thing in was less than friendly and looked kinda like the Black Pearl was around the corner lol :

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Not friendly right? Well thou it didnt hit us where we were working, where we lived (only about 12 miles from where we were working) was nailed by 70+ mph winds...up rooted 100's...yes 100's of tress in our neighborhood alone and MANY more than that thru the city we live in. Hail came from this storm up to tennis ball size in some areas. Now of course, we didnt know that it was THAT bad at the time...the wind was calm and no rain at all when we got there...but the race was surely on to get this thing done before the bottom dropped out.

To give you an idea of the sheer size of this thing, heres a pic my sister took of me standing next to get setting the hose up...note that im 6'3:

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As you can see, super nice RV...but quite dirty..paint is kinda dry and later pics will show the bug massacre on the front.

We didn't get it finished in one day, the rain caught us with an hour to go...and there was lightning...and something told me standing on a aluminum ladder in a lightning storm PROBABLY wasnt a good idea :)...but we came back the next day and finished it up...heres an after picture from the same angle:

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Luckly the owners were just going to park it for the winter in an open lot, so didnt care that it got rained on some...but it had a good coat of protection on it with the Meguiars FLAGSHIP (hah how appropriate for my write up theme!) Wax. Funny thing is after we finished up on the 2nd day...after we left...10 minutes later it poured again...we had a wash and wax on a car down the street after the RV...we pulled it out of the garage and started hosing it down and then the Big Fella up stairs decided he'd lend a hand lol...so we sat in the garage like a couple fools till it stopped 15 minutes later and we were able to finish the job. I swear Az weather is crazy....anyway back to the good stuff, the pictures!

Heres a full side shot of it before we started working...see how nice and blue the skies were at first! It sure changed fast:

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And heres the after shot...you can see reflections even from this far away which was pretty sweet...

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Here is an area on the back that proved to be a good before/after. Dirty and more like water streaks than spots...but we took care of that :)

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Here is the after shot...bright and gold kinda like treasure...hey another theme plug in!

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And now for the Bug Massacre...it wasn't pretty...and i'll tell you they were REALLY baked in there:

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It was fun scrubbing in those small headlight areas...but we did pretty good i think..

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Here is the other half...


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and after :

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We had soaked the area first with water then went at it with a mesh 'bug scrubber' spong and dawn soap...they wernt budging too much...so then we broke out the APC and let it soak...it helped some..but still not as many were coming off as we wanted...so even thou it wasnt 'part of the job'....i had brought my clay and went ahead and took it out...here is how it looked after claying for about 30 seconds:

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Wasnt fun...the 2 of us spent a good 45 minutes together just scrubbing and claying the front...then had to do the monster side mirror and movie theater screen size window. Then there were even more of my little buddies splattered across the area up top above the windsheild that I had the pleasure of getting to scrub off...but thats what we do and it was worth it in the end.

Heres one more before and after...this one is sort of a close up of the driver side fender

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and here is an after of the full 1/2 of the driver side:

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The back side wasnt pretty either. All these little grill slots were fun to do :)

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Heres the after...CU N AZ!

(Continued Below...)
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I'm back :)

So as always we try to get at least 1 50/50 shot, even if it is on a wash and wax. In this pic the far side, where you can see my reflection during one of my rare moments where my feet were on the GROUND instead of up 8 ft on the ladder, is waxed...the near side, where you basically see NO reflection, isnt

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Here is one more shot of the back side before:

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And this is after...I thought this pic turned out super cool :props:

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Here is the drivers side angle before, I thought the pop out areas were pretty cool and the fact that all the stripes/designs were all PAINTED, not decals...which make our work easier AND look better !

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Here it is after, just with the pop out areas put back in


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And of course the tires were a mess:

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But we know how to deal with those....we are called Windows and WHEELS after all

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The Flying Dutchman is ready to sail (or roll) again

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For anyone who is interested....APC+ 4:1 was used on the tires to clean them and Hyperdressing 2:1 to dress them (as well as wheel wells/mud flaps etc.)

Just good ole dish soap and water to clean it with since we were going to be waxing it anyway.

Meguiars Flagship Premium Wax was used...good stuff...quite thick but goes on nice with the DA and after letting it set it came off real easy too...even with a couple spots where the sun hit it for a little while as the wax was setting, it still didnt' give us any fuss when removing it...it wasnt 'hot' to us, but it was still in the low 90's that day...but even with that, still no problems with the wax.

Meguiars Mild Clay was used on the front, as well as on the jeep inside the garage you may have seen in a couple pictures. Someone had a ladder and scraped it across their plastic trim on top of the jeep and some paint transfered onto their trim. They asked if i could take it off...HAH who are they kidding, of course I can! Didn't take pictures of it but they appreciated the freebie :props:

Used my PC and a borrow Megs G110....gotta say im kinda partial to the PC after using the G110 for the first time, but thats another story. Having 2 DAs really cut down on the time spent and helped everything come out quite nice.

Pads were a Megs 2.0 softbuff finishing pad and a blue CCS 'Smart Pad'...both worked real well.

And of course our step ladder and step stool...dont leave home with out em on jobs like this!

Hope you all enjoyed the write up and pictures......and I'll CU N AZ!

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So how sore are your arms!?!? Nice job, that thing looks like a beast to detail!
 
Thanks for the great writeup Wills! That was a good read.
I can't imagine what it would take to polish that beast! You would have made a ton of $ though!
 
Great job detailing this beast. Looks awesome.
 
Wills, I meant to mention... Do you have a bug and tar sponge? If not that should work great on those bugs that were giving you hell.
 
So how sore are your arms!?!? Nice job, that thing looks like a beast to detail!

lol funny you ask. My arms wern't too bad after the detail...my forearms have gotten surprisingly stronger since Ive been polishing paint which i like :). THE TREES however that I had to help cut up for neighbors and then remove the stumps is what made me sore! Mainly the stumps...the 2nd one we did was trying to be a pain in the butt but we got it. We actually ended up using a floor jack to put under the stump once we had cut enough roots to be able to get under it...the just jacked it up and cut the rest of the roots real easy :)...arms at that point thou were pretty shot lol

Thanks for the great writeup Wills! That was a good read.
I can't imagine what it would take to polish that beast! You would have made a ton of $ though!

Yeah a 2 or 3 stepper would have been in the 4 figure range for sure...but even for just a wash and wax we still made our biggest payday to date :xyxthumbs:. Then I came home and spent a big chunk of it on an AG order haha, but it was for must haves not just 'want to have' stuff. Funny the guy wrote up a recommendation for us on their 'in neighborhood' forum and said we did it for $10...we didnt even charge a full $9 foot so really I think he owes us money! I appreciated the recommendation, just wish that our real pricing would have been put up..or better yet NO price at all.

Nice work and nice write-up... including great photography work... :dblthumb2:


How did you reach the higher sections of the RV?

Thanks Mike...the good photography goes to my sis, as I'm sure you figured since i was IN a lot of the pictures :). I read your write up almost a year back on how good write ups can make a difference...and I always try to take the time to put mine together nicely and add some humor for fun, I appreciate you compliemts.

The higher sections I just used an 8 ft step ladder...I could only do about a 4 ft wide area at a time...then had to get down and move it...over and over and over...but you do what you gotta do. Maybe one day i'll have a nice platform type set up where i can walk along 10 ft or so at once...if I had it for this job i would have called it 'walking the plank!' just to fit with the dutchman theme lol...but for now...its an 8 ft step ladder and a lot of patience :)


:)
Great job detailing this beast. Looks awesome.

Thanks as always Bobby!

Wills, I meant to mention... Do you have a bug and tar sponge? If not that should work great on those bugs that were giving you hell.

Yeah I thought I mentioned it in the write up...one of those mesh covered kinda sponges right? We've got a couple smaller hand size ones and i have a couple bigger ones that are mesh on one side and MF on the other that i'll often use on bugs or on the nasty lower pannels of really dirty cars that have mud or tar. Even with that we wern't getting as much off as we wanted...so thats why I just went for the clay...even thou it trashed it lol.
If it had been a hood or front fender I would have laid a soaked towel or a lot of soaked cloths on it to loosen everything up...but this thing was totally vertical and I didn't think they'd appreciate it if i were to staple the towels onto the front :laughing::eek:
 
Sorry, about that I meant to post a link to it. This is the kind I'm talking about...
You're going to love it...
Pinnacle Safe Scrub Bug & Tar Pad can be used on glass, chrome, vinyl, fiberglass, paint and clearcoats—100% safe when used with soapy water.

Funny i think you posted that same link in another thread of someone complaining about bugs today didn't you? I looked at the link form that thread...looks like something I may invest in on my next order . Do they last a long time?
 
Nice work on a nice RV! Actually the company that built it is local to my area, too.
 
Very nice job! I'm sure it was a satisfying job when done.

The Pinnacle Bug & Tar Sponge is very effective, especially when using with Tarminator.

Did you guys use a pressure washer on the front to try and remove the bugs?
 
Great job Wills!!! I can't imagine working on such a big vehicle. How long did it take you?! That's a lot of work. Great job nonetheless!
 
Nice work on a nice RV! Actually the company that built it is local to my area, too.

Thank! I had no idea where they were built...I assumed somewhere around where they build lots of tanks/air craft carriers/tour buses etc :)

Very nice job! I'm sure it was a satisfying job when done.

The Pinnacle Bug & Tar Sponge is very effective, especially when using with Tarminator.

Did you guys use a pressure washer on the front to try and remove the bugs?

I actually forgot to mention we hit it with tarminator first..hardly did anything, it works great on TAR (duh!) but bugs i havent had too good of luck with. Didnt hit it with an actual pressure washer (its near impossible to lug that thing around in the vehicle we have, hope to get a trailor someday) but we do have a 'sweeper nozzle' which is really like a pressure head....and we sprayed the hell outta it and it didn't do much...those things had been on there since New England so...kinda just had do scrub lol. I'm sure 2200+ PSI would have been more effective than a pressure head on a hose thou...just kinda had to work with what was available.

Great job Wills!!! I can't imagine working on such a big vehicle. How long did it take you?! That's a lot of work. Great job nonetheless!

It toooooooooook, a while lol. I'd say about 7 hours, give or take...and thats with 2 ppl and 2 DA's and a lot of time was used on just the bugs. We also always hit the roof with the pressure nozzle and a brush if needed to kinda clean the dirt off for the most part so that ties up time too. 7 hours was our quickest out of the RVs/5th wheels we've done, and it was the biggest...but having a 2nd DA made a huge difference, plus our process is getting better each time which is the biggest time saver of all.
 
Thanks Mike...the good photography goes to my sis, as I'm sure you figured since i was IN a lot of the pictures :).

I read your write up almost a year back on how good write ups can make a difference... and I always try to take the time to put mine together nicely and add some humor for fun, I appreciate you compliments.

Thank you for taking the time to create the write-up, it does help others to know what to do and how to tackle a project as well as inspires them based upon your success.


The higher sections I just used an 8 ft step ladder...I could only do about a 4 ft wide area at a time...then had to get down and move it...over and over and over...but you do what you gotta do.

My good friend Joe aka Superior Shine posted a thread on MOL called, DA on a Stick,

D.A. on a stick!

Here's an excerpt...

We do our share of RVs and travel trailers. In the past we would have to use a ladder to do the upper areas. After a small area was done we had to climb down from the ladder move it over a few feet and climb back up. A 40foot RV that needs a go with #49 then polished, then waxed is a heck of allot of climbing up and down the ladder.

So I used my head and came up with my "DA on a stick"!!!

I glued the handle from a paint roller to the back of my DA. I then wrapped it in tape. I use an extension pole I bought at home depot that I screw into the handle.

It has reduced our time we took to do RVs by more than half.

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Joe has forgotten more about detailing than the rest of us will ever know...


:dblthumb2:
 
The DA on a stick is only good for applying wax/sealant on RVs in nice condition. For polishing you need to get behind the machine and for that we use a scaffold like the yellow one we're using here in the bomber. It isn't very wide and breaks down for transportation. They sell at harbor freight for about $200.

We fly around an RV with one person on the scaffold waxing and another slowly pulling the scaffold along the RV.

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Thank you for taking the time to create the write-up, it does help others to know what to do and how to tackle a project as well as inspires them based upon your success.




My good friend Joe aka Superior Shine posted a thread on MOL called, DA on a Stick,

D.A. on a stick!

Here's an excerpt...




Joe has forgotten more about detailing than the rest of us will ever know...


:dblthumb2:

Its funny because I was thinking if something like that was possible...id just be nervous about having it up there on a pole like that...but im sure if everything was put together securely it would work.

It is something i will consider trying for sure, especially if RVs keep rolling in, but that scaffold listed below looks like a time and back saver thou!

The DA on a stick is only good for applying wax/sealant on RVs in nice condition. For polishing you need to get behind the machine and for that we use a scaffold like the yellow one we're using here in the bomber. It isn't very wide and breaks down for transportation. They sell at harbor freight for about $200.

We fly around an RV with one person on the scaffold waxing and another slowly pulling the scaffold along the RV.

351.JPG

That was my SECOND thought...i would think with oxidation removal and polishing..you would need to put more pressure on the pad than what the machines weight alone would supply.

My question is thou, in the pictures it looks like a Megs cutting pad that is being used on the pole...I dont think you were waxing with that were you?
 
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