Washing Question

[campersam9]

what is the best way to wash my pop outs? Is there a special soap? Mine are dusty and bird dirt on them.

[Jagiven]

I just use Dawn dish soap in a bucket of warm water, along with my long handled carwash brush. Good rinse and let it dry before putting it away.

[campersam9]

I will use that today. Thanks

[CAG]

Originally Posted by Jagiven

I just use Dawn dish soap in a bucket of warm water, along with my long handled carwash brush. Good rinse and let it dry before putting it away.

Keep in mine that Rejex recommends washing the car, RV, airplane, whatever with dawn to remove all previous waxes before using Rejex. Sounds like Dawn is pretty good at removing all of your hard waxing job.

[Jagiven]

Dawn, does remove wax. But it is also a great gentle cleaner. It does not do a great job cleaning pine tar.

[CAG]

Originally Posted by Jagiven

Dawn, does remove wax. But it is also a great gentle cleaner. It does not do a great job cleaning pine tar.

We have use Dawn for years but you do have to keep in mind that it is petroleum based and nothing petroleum based is truly “gentle”.

[bankr63]

I just did mine this weekend with the Camco Awning cleaner (did the awning too of course). Impressed with the results, the tent ends are mostly as white as new now. It did a good job on the grime that embeds in the cloth texture. Diluted it did seem to do some work on dissolving the pine tar spots, I expect that if I had used full strength as per instructions it might have taken those right off too.

Note: I got the bottle free from a neighbor who used it to clean his pup for sale. His results were really good too on an older unit; the tenting looked fantastic.

[TWP723]

Dawn is gentle enough for oil-soaked wildlife, not so for vehicles.

[RAurand]

DAWN = Kinda like using the LAVA SOAP! Anyone remember that???

[Yooper906]

Originally Posted by RAurand

DAWN = Kinda like using the LAVA SOAP! Anyone remember that???

Surely do. It had a lot of grit in it. Didn't know pumice and grit was added to Dawn.

[DocBrown]

We owned 2 hybrids, a 2003 Kiwi 17a, and the 2013 X20E that we just sold in April. 19 years total.

I think we're talking about 2 different things here. The OP asked about washing the pop-outs, that is the canvas. I only washed them once on the 17a. It was a really wet fall weekend and we had camped under several trees which leaves left stains on the vinyl. I used generic Oxy clean in hot water with a small scrub brush then rinsed with a hose. Otherwise I generally never had to do anything with them except for spot cleaning. They generally stayed clean.

If yours are really dirty I'd suggest Oxy Clean diluted in hot water. It's also what I used to clean the underside of the awning.

As far as washing the fiberglass surface of the camper, I only used a car wash solution that didn't remove wax. Real quick and simple with a long car wash brush.

[Hollander Mutthaulers]

Originally Posted by RAurand

DAWN = Kinda like using the LAVA SOAP! Anyone remember that???

The old gritty good-smelling black Lava soap seems to have disappeared, but new green Lava soap from Menard's is nice stuff; it works well and is always on my sink at home and in the bathroom of our trailer. Wouldn't leave home without it. : )

[Hollander Mutthaulers]

Agree with DocBrown -

Carwash soap for the vinyl tent material and oxyclean if needed. Just wipe it down, rinse, let it dry, treat with 303 or similar. Ours are like new after five years.

For fiberglass body use carwash soap, Turtle Wax Bug and Tar Remover with gentle use of used drier sheets and wax with ceramic spray on.

[Isaacs]

I use Simple Green on everything. If there are stains on the awning or tent canvas try mixing some oxalic acid with a small amount of water. It sounds scary but it's much easier on your canvas than bleach is and does almost as good a job. It's available on Amazon and the price is right. Bleach is fine for the fiberglass.

[TaftCoach]

Originally Posted by TWP723

Dawn is gentle enough for oil-soaked wildlife, not so for vehicles.

Yes indeed, Dawn's ad agency did an excellent job with those ads.

If the birds hadn't been soaked in oil, caregivers would have used a different product.

Companies spend time and effort to match chemicals with the surfaces and dirt they clean. Years ago I briefly worked with ZEP products and their R&D staff was filled with some really good chemists and engineers. I assume other companies do the same.