[Ian_Giles]

I have a shop customer that wants her frames cleaned up; the frames are Aluminium, donkeys years old and are not of the anodized variety.
So as the years have gone by some parts of the frame have become very grubby and weathered.
These are a part of the frame that have never been cleaned, but they have now fitted some nice, new signage inside this part of the frame, and now of course this highlights how grubby and old the frames look!

Now this isn't just ordinary dirt that a bit of fairy liquid and elbow grease will remove, it's 30 years of weathering and oxidization, so the surface is no longer smooth, rather it is rough and slightly pitted in places.

And it isn't the oxidization that coated aluminium frames suffer from (ie, powdery residue).

Any of you guys out there know the best thing out there to clean up aluminium in this condition?

Regards,

Ian

[marc al]

  The frames would have been anodised originally but it doesn't last forever. These will probably never come clean again however hard you try.

[keith b]

Ian

Go to www.tensid.com

They have a products called `Cladex Prime` and `Cladex Restore`which are used to clean & refurbish aluminium etc. (comes under the cladding catagory of products).

good luck

keith

[matt]

i was going to add

wouldnt you be better off using a polish of some kind, smething like brasso but for ali

[gaza]

When at the cleaning show{ Brum} Iwas talking to a rep from Tucker Pole Basingstoke and theve just started doing chemicals for treatment of glass like {concrete burn on glass}
and other treatments maybe worth a ring see if they ave a treatment to treat it.IF YOU NEED THE NO PUT A POST UNDER A TOPIC i M BOUND TO WRITE IN THE NEXT DAY OR SO.

 GAZA

[Ian_Giles]

I'll look into some of the info given, a couple of leads there.

Matt, working it over with something such as 'brasso' (yeah, I know, that isn't for aluminium) would be a no go. The time it would take to clean it up would be far to long. This little shop front is only £2.50 per clean!!
I'm regretting  telling her I would get it sorted I could well end out spending over 30 minutes getting this part of the front cleaned up!
The windows only take about 2 minutes to clean (the part they want cleaned is above the glazing) and I think she'll have a heart attack if I charge her more than a couple of quid extra as it is

I think I'll have a quick rub at it with something like 'Cillit Bang Crsytals' when they are closed.
Then if it looks like a long haul job I'll explain to her that it'll take so long that I'd have to charge her silly money to clean it for her.

It's funny isn't it, I can charge her £2.50 for the regular clean, it takes about 2 minutes to do; I could do 20 of these shop fronts with ease in an hour if I had them all next door to one another, an earning rate of £50 an hour (yeah, I know, in reality that doesn't happen!) but if I spent 30 minutes doing extra work and charged her just a tenner she would think I was ripping her off big time

Funny old world innit'

Ian

[thewindowcleaner1]

You used to be ablr to bye Aluminium cleaner from car/auto shop, this may do the job and if really bad a bit of fine wire wool?

Just an idea.

[Mike_G]

Before you buy anything expensive to baby oil it might work! Ihad to do some cladding years ago and used almost every product on the market most looked good when wet but dried off terrible, then we tried baby oil and it was magic. What made us try baby oil? well I couldn't possibly say. Good luck.

[matt]

Ian, just do a side at a time, so it will not eat into your profits and it'll keep the customer happy