There is a fair bit of aluminum in The Buffalo, both in and out. There's also a lot of galvanized steel. You can see both in the picture above. The steel I can't do much about--you can't polish it, and it doesn't take paint. The aluminum, however, can get nice and shiny with the right polish, and Mother's Aluminum Polish is the right stuff, as you can see from the pic. I spent a couple of hours giving all of the aluminum a good scrub and was able to achieve a nice mirror finish. I am contemplating getting some shelf-paper-like border to cover some of the steel, we shall see.
With the inside stuff mostly done, it was time to address the outside, and, more importantly, the underside of The Buffalo. I started with the drop-down legs.
The legs swing down in each corner, lock into place, and then telescope up or down to help stabilize the camper when it's set up. I had worked on the rear legs last year, and was able to remove one assembly completely and grease and paint it. The other one had bolts that just spun freely, and without access to both sides of the bolt, I had no way of removing it, so I worked on it in place. An OK solution, but not nearly as easy and thorough as working on it off the camper. So my goal was to remove these legs and rehab them in the shop. I sprayed on the penetrating oil and got to work.
And with one crank of the socket, I was done. This bolt head snapped off literally on my first try. Sigh. Applying ginger pressure to the remaining bolts told me it was best to just let them be and work on the legs in place. Of course, lying on my back and scrubbing, greasing and painting above my face makes this job 10x harder and much more unpleasant. But that's life with the old Buffalo. Sometimes you have to live it on its terms.
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