Acid washing

Alum. Trailers are the majority of what we acid wash. They come out really nice as well. And also we acid wash our regular accounts as well. once or twice a year to take the oxidation off the rivets on the sides and the alum trim. And actually our acid for fleet washing is called aluminum brightener as well.
 
Hey Ron,
If you mean by acid washing you're referring to two stepping, I would tell you virtually everything we wash is two stepped including the windows and mirrors.The only things we don't are some polished tanks and wheels that are not durabright clearcoated, and sometimes we even "flash" those as well. As far as aluminum trailers are concerned, we wash those as well. This includes dirt/rock end-dumps, along with garbage-hauling moving floor trailers. It improves their appearance a great deal. The salt and liquid deicer that is sprayed on the roads up here during the winter is VERY CORROSIVE to aluminum (etches it and turns it black), and this is the only way to resurrect it. I would imagine that you don't see a whole lot of that down there, huh?
 
Anything can be acid washed like Bio Dude said, but the biggest thing to not ruin something when acid washing is to make sure your concentration is right. Too many people mix the acid far too strong, and that is when they start getting from bad to terrible results and totally ruining the polish on aluminum. I put about a quarter cup to two gallons and it is just about perfect. a solid 50:1 ratio.
 
Scott Stone said:
Anything can be acid washed like Bio Dude said, but the biggest thing to not ruin something when acid washing is to make sure your concentration is right. Too many people mix the acid far too strong, and that is when they start getting from bad to terrible results and totally ruining the polish on aluminum. I put about a quarter cup to two gallons and it is just about perfect. a solid 50:1 ratio.
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speaking of aluminum , what do you use to fix ugly aluminum ? Or at leat make it look better
 
I personally have never taken before/afters of nasty aluminum we've cleaned up, but it's a good idea. I never seem to bring a camera along when I'm washing. It's unfortunate because I had the perfect nasty rails on a trailer 2 weeks ago that looked awesome after just one pass. Usually when a customer has that, we tell them ahead of time that it will take several washing sessions to restore it back to an acceptable level. If its brown in appearance usually only one attempt is necessary, but when it's black with salt and deicer corrosion and hasn't been cleaned throughout the winter it's a different story. We prefer to use a milder acid due to the fact that for most applications a strong one isn't necessary. The other advantage is that it also is less of an environmental impact as well. Like Scott said, the stronger it is the greater the chance of ruining something. I've seen numerous times where someone has tried to "brighten" the aluminum with a strong acid and it has resulted with the aluminum being so badly burned that it has turned to a white chalky appearance. We try to restore it to the original aluminum color without burning it. Then it can still look good for years to come.
 
I do use acid on occasion, but I don't two step. I would like to, but it makes my hot machines less multi functional. In reality, I do not know anyone that is two stepping in Phoenix.
 
I dont have any before/after pics of aluminum trailers, but look at the bottom rails, you can see the difference. Imagine the whole trailer being brightened the same way, works good.
 

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Found a couple more. Even the diesel tank under the trailer came clean. The other pics were washed with the 2 step. This pic was an acid wash because thats what this customer requests.
 

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Sorry there Scott. I forgot your were down there as well. Yeah I suppose two stepping probably isn't necessary down there since you guys don't get a lot of rain to muddy things up. How does it make your machines less functional, if I could ask? Do you set your water temp hotter? How is that red clay/dirt to clean off of the trucks anyway? Does it stain at all?
 
Hey there Bulldog. Those look pretty nice. Hey, I heard that Fleetwash is big down there in Chicago. Do you have a lot of trouble trying to compete with them? I would imagine if your doing work like that you probably don't have a lot of competition from them, huh?
 
Biodude said:
Sorry there Scott. I forgot your were down there as well. Yeah I suppose two stepping probably isn't necessary down there since you guys don't get a lot of rain to muddy things up. How does it make your machines less functional, if I could ask? Do you set your water temp hotter? How is that red clay/dirt to clean off of the trucks anyway? Does it stain at all?
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You forget that we have some large truck terminals, etc. here. The problem is two stepping through a hot water machine. Acid does not like the galvanized piping in the heater. So it tears it up pretty quickly. I could down stream the acid instead of upstreaming, but it seems like a lot of running back and forth. Maybe it is just my own biases.
For what it is worth, I am doing a fair bit of concrete and use the same machines.
 
It is alot of runing back and forth to the truck. But we recently put a second hot water skid on the truck, and saturday we had to acid wash at a new account I just had mine in the acid and the other guy was in soap to neutralize, It worked out pretty good.
 
Scott Stone said:
You forget that we have some large truck terminals, etc. here. The problem is two stepping through a hot water machine. Acid does not like the galvanized piping in the heater. So it tears it up pretty quickly. I could down stream the acid instead of upstreaming, but it seems like a lot of running back and forth. Maybe it is just my own biases.
For what it is worth, I am doing a fair bit of concrete and use the same machines.
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Well, then it pays so you can remain flexible. I just came from Orlando and it seemed that the trucks (or anything else for that matter) were hardly even dirty. Washing trucks down there would be easy (Randy and I would LOVE IT!), but it would probably be difficult to convince the fleet managers to get washed on a regular basis. Do you have that problem Scott?
 
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