Gnu Finish
I have a serious bone to pick with Bob Giddings... he recommended the product on RORT and claimed it would clean and polish my trailer at the same time.
I naively went out and bought some "Gnu-Finish" as you recommended, Bob. The ubiquitous and loquacious Bob Giddings uses it, I said to myself, it must be the best. Couldn't find it at the usual hardware stores, or even Canadian Tire, but eventually I lucked out and located a small bottle at the local vets office. That's right... the veterinarian... our dependable doggy doctor. He'd apparently had it in stock for about twenty-three years but since it didn't have a 'beast by' date we took it anyway. Man, that stuff is hard to find and that's no bull.
We also bought a small fold-up ladder so we could reach the roof. And some acrylic 'corking' in case anything needed to be corked.
When we arrived at the storage depot in Campbellford, the black marks on the RV didn't look particularly ominous, so we decided to omit the streak remover stage and just go with the cleaner/polish as you recommended. I dampened a cloth with water, added some polish, and rubbed it in carefully following the directions (which were in the African Khoikhoi dialect incidentally - good thing I speak a bit of Bantu. Oddly enough, from what I could make out, it said something about not getting any on the horns. I suspect it was a typo or a translation error on my part.)
It did a fair job of removing the streaks but it was remarkably hard going, balancing as I was on that tiny ladder, so we popped the slide out and sat in the RV for a time while it dried. I even had a beer or two... when we came out again, to our astonishment, all the areas where we had applied the Gnu-Finish were covered with coarse hair and the bottom edges had even longer hair - kinda like a long straggly beard!
I didn't mind the two horns that were starting to grow out of the front of the trailer (once I got used to them), but the back end was a mess. The storage lot manager made us shovel it up and bag it before he'd even let us put it in his garbage cans - I don't blame him, the smell was enough to make an ant elope or a cow hide. That long, shaggy tail may come in useful but we're not sure what for yet - maybe I can hang a back-up camera or some snazzy Christmas decorations on it.
My wife, Ortelia was furious - carried on like a wilde beest in fact - but proved she was up to the challenge and produced a little, pink 'lady razor' from her purse which restored it back to normal... except for a little stubble around the windows and other hard to shave places. If we'd have known about the side effects, I'd have bought along my Phillips electric razor - we'd have been done in half the time and likely gotten a closer shave. The stubble is annoying so this summer we're thinking about doing a 'Brazilian' on it. Women will know what that means... ouch.
All in all, I wouldn't recommend the product to anyone else.
First of all, it smells awfully rank - like a herd of unwashed cattle - and the side effects are not exactly benign. Whenever I hook the trailer up now, there's a whinnying sound, and when we pull it with the truck... I can hear hoof-beats. I know this is impossible but I swear to dog I saw a lion and two hyenas chasing us as we ungulated down the 401 at eight over... it behooves me to think twice about using this stuff in the future. I'll probably gnever buy agnother bottle once this is finished.
I realize you probably meant well... but thanks for gnothing, Bob!
(All in all, it's been a tough weekend. Since we couldn't be bothered to order the plastic gutter extensions from Camping World we took clothes-pins, as someone suggested, and put them at the corner of the gutters. What a disaster... the trailer is just too damn heavy and it keeps falling off the line.)
