Banana Wraps and Frames

In the Airstream world "banana wraps," much to my children's chagrin, have nothing to do with an edible fruit dish. They do, however, refer to the aluminum, curved shell that surrounds the bottom edges of the trailer frame. We drilled out the rivets holding the Argosy banana wraps in place and removed them. Avery was on power washing duty. We got creative with his protective eye gear as his shop goggles were fogging. Who knew his ski goggles would do the trick without the foggy lenses! After sanding to rough up the surface we sprayed Mad Dog Primer on the aluminum. Finished with a coat of black rust preventative paint the wraps look like new.

The steel frame of the Argosy was ground to remove the rust and we hired a welder to shore it up in a few places. Overall, the frame was in good condition. We used Por-15 metal prep followed by a rust preventative paint. The photo of the trailer tongue shows the back part prior to these steps and the front after. We swear by Por-15. It works great on steel surfaces! In hindsight, we think we would do frame-off renovation next time in order to take it to be sandblasted. grinding the rust off the frame manually was very labor intensive and time consuming!