Bring back the shine on our first new to us camper (gel coat)

[Mike Phillips]

Thanks for the PM about your thread.

Jeff aka GSKR has already shared a lot of good recommendations and he buffs out some of the worst projects on planet earth.

I'm curious too as I cannot find any detailed guides on this,

Although I wrote this detailed guide for boats all the exact same principals would apply to anything made out of gel-coat.

In the book I placed boats into 4 categories from new to one tick away from the point of no return and then in each of these chapters I explained in detail how to restore the gel-coat using pretty much every tool sold on Autogeek.com AND how to do all the steps by hand.

I even included how to do a 4-step process by hand and I've NEVER seen this explained in print before in my life.

So there is a "detailed guide" on how to do this type of work it just has a picture of a boat on it instead of a camper.

If you click this link you can see screenshots of the index which is detailed in an of itself and also 6 pages long.

Paperback book - How To Detail Boats With Marine 31 by Mike Phillips



For anyone interested in learning the art of restoring gel-coat that is as bad as it can get, be it on a camper or a boat, then attend my boat detailing class in February as you will learn everything you need to know to restore gel-coat to like new condition.


Marine 31 Boat Detailing Class - Saturday February 4th, 2017

how to you identify if you need to sand or if a compound will suffice?

Experience is the best way to "know" but if you don't have it then pictures would help a lot. Whatever you tried to share in the way of pictures didn't work so try something else. I've written a lot of articles in my life on how to work with pictures in the forum world but now days I give up. I know how and I taught myself.


As for restoring the shine to oxidized gel-coat, heres the two ways do do it quick and dirty.



Sanding
Hand or machine sand the gel-coat and the use a rotary buffer to remove your sanding marks and then use your Meguiar's polisher to remove the holograms.

Unlike Jeff, I prefer to machine sand as much as possible because it's faster, easier on me and the sanding marks are a LOT more uniform in their depth and as such buff out faster. Again, that makes it easier and faster for me to remove them.

The best way to sand the gel-coat would be to use the Mirka Abralon sanding discs like I show in my boat detailing book. You can use these by hand or with any SIMPLE dual action polisher like the Meguiar's polisher you already own.

Stick with #3000 grit discs and take your time and you can sand off years of dead, oxidized gel-coat. Then buy or rent a rotary buffer, get a wool cutting pad and Marine 31 Captains One-Step Compound & Polish and remove your sanding marks.

Then use the SAME product with a RUPES coarse blue foam cutting pad on your Meguiar's polisher to remove the holograms.

Then seal the surface with a wax, sealant or Marine 31 Captain's UV50 Boat Coating.



Machine compounding - no sanding
If you don't want to sand, then buy or rent a rotary buffer, get a wool cutting pad and Marine 31 Captains One-Step Compound & Polish and then buff and buff and buff for hours pushing hard.

That's the HUGE difference between how you approach restoring SEVERE oxidation.

You can push lightly to sand or you can push hard for hours to machine compound, your choice.



This is how you lean into the buffer....




DeWALT 849X sans handle and grabbing the rubber overmold on the head of the unit and the pushing down hard...





It will take you a LOT longer to try to buff out this camper using only the Meguiar's dual action polisher. This is a FREE SPINNING orbital polisher and take my word for it, while it can be done it will be a lot faster to use a direct drive rotary buffer or spend the money and get the FLEX 3401 gear-driven orbital and tackle this way plus have a tool that will last you a lifetime and you can use on all your vehicles.


If you go the machine compounding route with a rotary the follow the same procedure outlined above, that is get and use the Marine 31 Captains One-Step Compound & Polish and use this with a RUPES coarse blue foam cutting pad on your Meguiar's polisher to remove the holograms.

Then seal the surface with a wax, sealant or Marine 31 Captain's UV50 Boat Coating.


I've shared both the above procedures multiple times with local boat owners and they always come back to me and say,

Thank you.

I wish they were the type of people that knew how to use a computer and type and take pictures and join a forum and create a thread but alas... they're just typical guys.

[Mike Phillips]

Since I do know how to use a computer, share pictures and create a thread to show others how to do things.... here you go....


Here's a FULL write-up showing how to push hard for hours...


24' Pro-Line Boat - Extreme Marine Makeover - Oxidation Removal



Here's a full write-up showing you hand to machine sand and then buff with a rotary buffer but not having to push hard for hours...



How to wetsand, cut and buff a gel-coat boat



And Captains One Step Compound & Polish? Cut and polish with it?

You bet.


Pictures: 1960 Glastron - Wetsand, Cut & Buff at Marine31Online.com



BEFORE




Close-up of the above shot...




Extreme close-up of the above shot --> Notice the rough texture? This will all have to be sanded FLAT.











Here's the finished results....
I took these shots the next morning, both the top cap and the hull had been sanded, compounded, polished and waxed....

















All compounding and polishing done with one product. The other product on the bow of the boat is the sealant.


Try to get this type of information in a Facebook post.

[Mike Phillips]

Most tool rental stores will rent rotary buffers and they usually already have wool pads to go with them, call around and check out tool rental shops.

If you own a few cars and do your own detailing, there's reason I featured the FLEX 3401 on the cover, (prime space on a book), of the boat detailing book.





You can burn and turn the same wool pads we use on rotary buffers on the FLEX 3401 for amazing cutting power without the hologram issue.

[solar07]

Thank you both GKSR and Mike for all this wealth of knowledge. Mike, I didn't realize the pics weren't working, my apologies for this. I had read a few ways to do it. Here they are again below the right way.


Front cap head on

Side of cap (not sure why it shows blue, it is not in real life)

Side

Side Angle

The spot behind the awning bar is full shine.

[solar07]

Whole side at angle

Side angle close up

Side angle close up, different panel

Side, head on shot.

[Mike Phillips]

AMAZING what a few pictures will do to help tell a story....


Are these picures AFTER you buffed it out?

Or

Are these pictures how it looks now?


If this is how the camper shell looks now then you DON'T need to do any sanding or compounding.

Get a great cleaner/wax and some quality foam cutting pads for your Megs polisher and go to town....


EXACTLY which model of Meguiar's polisher do you have?

What size backing plate does it have?



Again...

AMAZING what a few pictures will do to help tell a story....

Forget everything I wrote previously.... that was a waste of time...

[solar07]

AMAZING what a few pictures will do to help tell a story....


Are these picures AFTER you buffed it out?

Or

Are these pictures how it looks now?


If this is how the camper shell looks now then you DON'T need to do any sanding or compounding.

Get a great cleaner/wax and some quality foam cutting pads for your Megs polisher and go to town....


EXACTLY which model of Meguiar's polisher do you have?

What size backing plate does it have?



Again...

AMAZING what a few pictures will do to help tell a story....

Forget everything I wrote previously.... that was a waste of time...

Those pictures are after it was washed extensively and some sort of a liquid coating applied(the detailer called it). The claim was that my gel coat was too far gone to recover so they didn't want to spend any time buffing, polishing, compounding, as the claim was it would be dull again in 3 months. They put some sort of liquid seal on it instead but would not tell me exactly what that was. That did bring "some" shine back out.

I have the MT300 with two 5" plates ( one you recommend a lot with the porter and the megs plate), as well as the megs 3")

I am fearful that the camera under that light is showing more shine than I see with my eyes but maybe that is a trick. At angles it does have some shine though, more so in protected areas than others. Head on the shine disappears.

There are some others subscribed so I hope your time was not totally wasted. :/

[Mike Phillips]

Those pictures are after it was washed extensively and some sort of a liquid coating applied(the detailer called it). The claim was that my gel coat was too far gone to recover so they didn't want to spend any time buffing, polishing, compounding, as the claim was it would be dull again in 3 months. They put some sort of liquid seal on it instead but would not tell me exactly what that was. That did bring "some" shine back out.

Could be that stuff I've seen advertised on Ship Shape TV, some type of product you simply paint on and it turns dull oxidized gel-coat back to clear shiny gel-coat. I've never used it so I have no personal experience but I have heard that it's only a temporary fix.

From experience, if it's too good to be true than it's probably not the real deal.

I have the MT300 with two 5" plates ( one you recommend a lot with the porter and the megs plate), as well as the megs 3")

That's a good set up as smaller pads rotate better on that tool than large pads. Meguiar's used to sell a 7" pad that was about 1" thick and that was just too much mass for effective correction on anything.


Here's the deal...

From my experience, gel-coats don't like soft foam pads for correction work. A soft foam pad is okay for machine applying a NON-cleaning wax to gel-coat in new or like new condition, but that's about it.

My experience is that gel-coats like first, stiff cutting pads. This would be for using,

1. Compounds
2. Polishes
3. Cleaner/Waxes - (remember, cleaner/waxes or AIOs contain abrasives like compounds and polishes)

There's a great heavy cut cleaner/wax in the Marine 31 line that will work well with foam cutting pads on you're Meguiar's MT300. Here's a full write up showing this product in action on a severely oxidized boat.

Pictures: 2000 Baja 232 Boss High Performance Extreme Makeover


Here's the link to the heavy-cut cleaner wax.

Marine 31 Gel Coat Heavy-Cut Cleaner Wax, boat cleaner wax, gel coat cleaner wax









If you want to try a light cutting cleaner/wax then here's a full write-up with pictures


Pictures: 16' Key Largo Center Console Boat Detailing Class with Marine 31


For the above boat we used this,

Marine 31 All-In-One Gel Coat Polish and Wax, boat cleaner wax, boat polish and wax



For large things like boat and campers, two things...

1. With a one step cleaner/wax you only have to go around the "thing" ONCE. You don't typically get as good as results as going around the thing three times, i.e. compound, polish and then wax but think about how much time in buffing and wiping you have to do with a three step or even two step as compared to a one-step.

2. Moving into the future, gel-coat will oxidize. So might as will find a great one-step cleaner/wax and do the initial work and then use the same product to maintain the results because the gel-coat is going to re-oxidize so you're going to want to stay on top of it and again... you don't want to stay on top of a LARGE thing using three steps.


Hope that makes sense...

[Mike Phillips]

As for pads...

You're in luck. There are now lots of 5.5" pad options for 5" backing plates...

Look at the cutting pad optoins here,

5.5" SUPER THIN FOAM PAD OPTIONS for your Dual Action Polisher



For this type of work, you can even get away with a tick thicker pad but what's still considered a thin pad. From this article,


Video: Mark your backing plate to make it easy to see pad rotation




Lake Country

5.5" Flat Pads

In order from the most to the least aggressive

Yellow = Cutting pad (most aggressive)
Orange = Light Cutting Pad
White = Polishing Pad
Black = Finishing Pad
Blue = Waxing Pad (softest)




B&S makes some like the above 5.5" flat pads but I don't think I have any articles on them at this time.


Also, for heavier oxidation, I'm always impressed by the RUPES blue coarse foam cutting pad.


Hope that helps...

[solar07]

2. Moving into the future, gel-coat will oxidize. So might as will find a great one-step cleaner/wax and do the initial work and then use the same product to maintain the results because the gel-coat is going to re-oxidize so you're going to want to stay on top of it and again... you don't want to stay on top of a LARGE thing using three steps.


Hope that makes sense...

How many times a year would I use such a product (cleaner/wax)? Reason I ask is, the Gel-Coat like clear is only so thick. Using an abrasive with a heavy cut, how many years before I cut away the entire coating? I know you explained in your complete guide that clear is about as thick as a stick it note or thinner.....

Thank you again.