After two years of sea air, lack of cleaning and general neglect, my box trailer is looking pretty rough. So I decided to give it a bit of well over due TLC. First job is to attempt to clean up the heavily oxidised aluminium sheet panels.

Does any one know of a quick fix to remove oxidisation from the aluminium? Or am I simply going to have to use elbow grease?

Septone "Ali Bright" acid cleaner or the Chemtech equivalent, avail at auto stores and hardware.

They are the shazzizle.

BUT very very dangerous, this stuff demands respect.

I missed that you are in UK so maybe you don't have those cleaners there. There will be equivalents. Rust converters based on phosphoric acid work OK for light cleaning but don't do much. For proper oxide layer removal to get it back to bright and clean the strong stuff is all that will work. Septone Ali Bright is awesome.

But are u sure it is aluminium - seems an expensive way to build a trailer. Not just galv steel sheet?

Not much help to you but the apprentice at Custom Aluminium here in Perth built this in his spare time..all aluminium...we are discussing a contra deal...might be some time before I get my trailer from him!

Thanks for all the tips. A lot of the brands mentioned can't be bought in the UK. I did find this, I guess it's pretty similar:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321138006692?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2648

Last night, I tried a bit of foaming Mr Muscle oven cleaner on a small area on one of the aluminium panels, it stripped the oxidisation off, but it left a horrid grey effect, looked worse than oxidised panel.

Hopefully the stuff on ebay will do the trick:)

Cheers

me too:)

Just to finish the thread off, today I spent 6 hours cleaning the trailer. The trailer was in a pretty bad state, very heavy oxidisation and very dull.

Hand washed and dried, then sprayed metklean ali bright on in stages. I used a 4 inch brush to agitate the metklean ali bright into the heavier areas of oxidisation. Washed down with hot soapy water, then hosed down with clean water and dried again.

Finally finished it all of with Autosol metal cleaner/polish. This was buffed up to a nice shine.

The old oxidisation has left bad scars and its impossible to blend it all in, but the general finish is smooth and shiny. Massive improvement:)