The Rear Ramp & Wings Receive Major TLC
Welcome back! (pun intended)
After weeks of progress, The Traveling Pheasant has arrived at the final stage of exterior sanding – the back of the trailer!
This stage consists of four parts: the ramp, wings, barn doors and the arched frame. This post, along with part 2 will cover the ramp and the beginning trials of wings but following posts will be devoted to the barn doors and arched frame since this whole back side took many days and work sessions!
I know what you are thinking while looking at the before photo of the back of the trailer- it doesn't look like it need much work. From a distance, it looks ok…right? Sadly, no.
When you look closer you can see there are areas where rust has been spreading under the paint and started to chip. Not to mention, the existing paint is not smooth. If I left it with minimal attention, it would stick out like a sore thumb compared to the other sides when I repaint.
Ramp It Up
The ramp was going to be a laborious task with its additional dimensional bars (adding three more surfaces to sand!) rather than just one flat side.
I decided to begin with the most obvious area of need – the very bottom, below the ramp hinge. The paint was almost all flakes in this region and a quick sand down did a world of good.
Before:
After:
Next, I moved up to tackle the ramp itself. The chipped areas sanded down well enough; however, I was noticing the paint in this section may have been a different type. It almost seemed like an undercoating with some rubber in it. The sandpaper was covered with black sticky tar, rendering it useless. After going through more sandpaper than I care to admit, I needed a new method to get this terrible paint removed.
I had purchased a non-offensive smelling paint stripper to attempt in the difficult area of the wings (more on this below), so I gave this a try.
I had never used a paint stripper before but it definitely didn’t do what I was expecting it to! The areas where it worked well (I assume where the paint was thinner) it turned into this strange paper-thin rubber like sheet that just peeled off with a scraper. The other areas where it did not work, remained goo. It removed some paint but not all, and I had to wash off the excess, making it more work in the long run.
As I have never used a paint stripper before, I don’t know if the product had the usual reaction, but from my experience, I would not recommend it unless desperate.
I found that using a paint scrapper to chip the areas away worked best. This removed enough of the rubber like paint to allow for sanding away the remaining underlayer.
This whole process took about 3 days in total to get the ramp to smooth, mostly bare metal that was ready for priming.
On A Wing & A Prayer
After the ramp itself was completed, I moved on to the wings. The areas on either side of the ramp were easy enough to sand, though it was tough to get around the lights and close to the edges near the ramp springs. In the end, I had to use a piece of sandpaper and do those areas by hand. Then there was the time-consuming process of filling in the dents and holes with bondo, waiting for it to dry, sanding it down then spraying on primer to seal it.
Tougher still were the front sides of the wings (facing the front of the trailer). I could not get the sander in the tight narrow places around the lights and the apex of the triangle, even using the tiny detail attachment on my mouse palm sander. I did my best to hand sand and use a paint scraper, but nothing was working. I need another solution to get the thick layers of paint to blend smoothly.
My next idea was to use bondo to provide that smooth transition from the paint to bare metal since it had worked wonders on the other areas. However, this did not work either. I could not get a smooth application nor could I sand it down properly.
I am not giving up on this area so stay tuned! I will revisit with more experiments another day, but for now, I was happy enough that the back sides were complete.
The Power Of Paint
Frustrated after the lack of success on the front sides of the wings and the difficult work of the ramp, it was starting to feel that even with constant sanding I was not getting anywhere. I wanted to easily piece to finish, so I focused my attention on another paint point area – the barn doors divider.
This small piece was manageable and I was able to paint it, allow it to completely dry and reinstall it with a big smile on my face. This was the motivation I needed to keep pushing forward.
The back side is now about half way done. Next week the horse trailer renovation will continue with the inside of the ramp, trying again on the wings and beginning work around the arched frame. Again, the transformations are amazing!
See you back next week ;)
Heather
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