Stop Road Damage! Airstream Rock Guard Rock Wraps - DIY Install

In today's video, we're going to solve a problem on our airstream that is caused by our tires, and that is these rock guards are getting dented up because we have aggressive off-road tires on the airstream. Now we've helped prevent that by adding some mud flaps on the back of the truck that help that, but the aggressive tires over time have put a number of little dings in here, and it's exactly what these rock guards are supposed to do, protect the trailer from those dings, but they don't look great. So we've got a solution to that, and we're going to show you that next. Hi, I'm Randy, and I'm Diane, and we're Zephyr Travels, and we have an airstream that we travel around the country in, and we've been doing that for the last eight years, and this airstream has a number of miles on it, and it's been towed cross-country probably five, six times, and it's gotten a little, I don't want to say abuse, but a little wear and tear, you know, some, you know, patina. Yeah. And so it's, it's fine, but we do like to have our stuff looking great, so we went to Airstream Supply and bought rock guard wraps. Did I say that right? Rock guard rock wraps. Oh, rock guard rock wraps. So say that very quickly three times. Yeah, so rock guard rock, now you got me, you know, I can't say it. Rock guard rock wraps, and this, these are these right here, and they are custom made to fit an airstream, and they are made out of essentially boat decking material. So it's a high density foam that you would see on a boat. It's water resistant, stain resistant, and it has an adhesive backing on it. Now these have all been specially cut, and they do carry the Airstream insignia on it, but I'm going to tell you at the end of the video how you could do this on a, any trailer really. If you want to put some type of protection on the front of it, this might be a great option, and there's, this material is available that you could add to your trailer. So we'll talk about that at the end. So I guess, what are we supposed to do? Well, one of the great things that you get when you get anything from Airstream is you get detailed instructions, and this is what we got with our rock guard rock wraps. This is application instructions. The first thing that you'll need is some tools. So in your toolbox, you want to have a sharp razor knife, isopropyl alcohol, 90 percent, blue dawn dish soap, masking tape, or in our case, we don't have tape, we have clamps. Right, we're going to try clamps. We're going to try clamps, and several clean lint-free rags. Now first is preparation. The first step you want to do is to use the blue dawn dish soap and high quality clean lint-free rag to remove all grease, wax, dirt, and other substances from the areas where the rock guard rock wrap is going to be installed. So we're going to use this, which is the, you know, quick spray bottle. We found this, you know, we use this for our dishes when we travel, and I found that this is really a great cleaner for, you know, cleaning countertops and such, so it should be perfect for this. Let me just foam some on here. What's nice about this cleaner is it also removes grease and any oil-based products. It has a degreasing agent in it. Let me just hit it one more time. These spray bottles are very convenient. Yeah, so that looks pretty clean. The next step is to use your isopropyl alcohol in a new clean rag to remove all leftover residue. Ensure the area is completely dry before continuing. So I just have regular isopropyl alcohol in this little spray bottle. I actually carry this in our back compartment, and I use it to sanitize my hands after we dump the tanks. So there's this regular, I think it's 70% or 78% isopropyl alcohol in here. We'll spray that on. Of course, you know, when the instructions said you needed alcohol, I didn't quite expect this. Okay, and ensure the area is completely dry before continuing. Right, and this alcohol has a very high evaporation rate, so it won't take much for that to dry. So this is the rock guard, and they're available in different colors. You can get a charcoal, almost a black, this gray, there is a green, and I don't know, there's four colors. Maybe it's charcoal, and then there's a black. But there's four different colors available. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to take a little bit of tape, and I'm going to just put some tape there to show where we have it lined up, so when we go to put it back on, it won't take as much. Because that should help me realign it when I take the clamps off. Because we have to take it back off and slip the paper on the back so that it can be peeled out from the middle. The next step is to identify the first pad to install, then turn the pad over so that the adhesive backing is face up. With a sharp razor knife, carefully cut the paper adhesive backing from the center of the pad towards the edges. So you want to, you don't want to go like this, you want to start here in the middle, and you just want to cut through the paper. So just light pressure on it. Okay, you actually want to go center to top edge, center to bottom edge. Yep. Okay. Okay, I think I've got it. Okay. Be sure to completely cut through the adhesive backing, but do not cut into the pad. I think that's what I've done. Keep going. Now from, now starting from the center cut you just made, peel back two inches of the paper backing and fold to crease, and then repeat on the other side. So you want to pull back about this much and then create a, create a crease like this, and then repeat on this side. And this stuff is pretty sticky. Okay. Okay, then turn the pad back over. Turn this over? Go ahead. And reposition it exactly where you want it installed. Don't we fold these back? Oh, let's see. Repeat, fold both pieces of the paper backing in place to cover the adhesive. You skipped a step. Oh, never mind. Yeah, you want to fold this back. All you wanted to do was create a crease in here. Oh, okay, gotcha. Now we're going to put it back on. Use our tape marks to line it up. Sorry I didn't move the camera, but we've got it repositioned back on here close to where we want it. I think it needs to go up just a little bit. Right about there. A little bit here. Oh, yeah. I don't think I want to move it that way. Okay. This down here got to move. Okay. Okay, then, okay? Yeah. Then you want to firmly secure one side of the pad to the surface area using masking tape. Taping prevents the pad from moving. Okay, so we have the clamps, but I can kind of see the idea of the tape. I think we're going to pause for a minute. I'm going to look to see if I've got some better tape. You really want to spend your time getting this lined up and on here, because once it's in place, it's there for good. There's no going back. Yeah, you're living with whatever mistakes you make, so try to make as few as you can. Okay, lift the side that is not taped down and peel the paper backing to the crease. So the two inches. Got it. Then what? Firmly press down on the pad where the exposed adhesive is. Okay. Apply pressure from the center of the pad outward, center to top, center to bottom, to ensure no air is trapped beneath the pad. Okay. Continue to line the pad and peel. Continue to line the pad and peel back the paper backing to expose an additional two to three inches. So what they want you to do is just work this a small amount at a time. That would be five centimeters to seven and a half centimeters, and repeat step seven. Yeah, so you don't want to try to do it all at one time. No. And this you want to continue until one complete side of this pad is adhered. Once the first side is complete, remove the masking tape and repeat step seven and eight for the other half of the pad. Now we don't need the clamps. We don't need the masking tape. So now you repeat steps seven and eight. Firmly press down on the pad where the exposed adhesive is. Apply pressure from the center of the pad outward, center to top, to center bottom. Continue to line the pad and peel back the paper backing to expose an additional two to three inches at a time. And then you want to apply even pressure to the pad to ensure a firm bond between the pad and the surface area. Right. There shouldn't be any air gaps or anything. It should be nice and tight. Okay. And then you're done. All right, so we have, there's little pieces to go on the bottom, little pieces here that just carry the effect down. So we're going to use this same procedure to do them. And then we have the other side to do, but we're not going to make you watch all that in regular time. We're just kind of fast forward for all of that as we mess through this stuff. Do you want to put the bottom on? Yeah, we're going to do the bottom. We're going to follow the same procedure. We're going to slice this in the middle. Again, just cut the backing like that. Peel back a couple inches and put it back for now. Oh, we finished installing our rock guard wrap protectors. Rock guard, rock wraps, rock, rock guard, rock wraps. Rock guard. Okay. So anyway, we finished installing our rock guard wrap. I can't even say that because you mess up the W's. Rock guard, rock wraps on here. And they look pretty nice. And it does hide up all the little nicks and dings and it should protect it from getting any future nicks and dings on here. Yeah. So what do you think? Looks nice. And then it says Airstream and a nice little piece to finish it off. So, you know, give it a real nice look. Yeah, I'm pleased. I like the light gray because it doesn't stand out. Now, if you want them to stand out, if you happen to have like a Midnight Flamingo or whatever, and you wanted black wraps or you wanted your Airstream to look like a Midnight Flamingo, you could get the black wraps for it. But I like the light gray. It kind of blends in nicely. A couple of tips I want to share after doing both sides. One, definitely use masking tape. Get some strong masking tape. The stuff I had was a painter's tape and it doesn't have the same level of adhesion as if you get the old-fashioned brown masking tape. So I'd definitely get something like that with some good adhesion. Make sure your work surface is clean. The surface we worked on had a little bit of something on it that put a little stain on the one of the wraps. And so not too happy about that. But they are going to get dirty. They are going to be facing whatever comes off the tires. So I'll live with it. Get it lined up so that it looks best along the top. And don't worry so much about the gap on the bottom because you're not going to see that as much. So work with your upper gap. Get that lined up as best you can. They say quarter inch reveal. Realistically, it was hard to get a quarter inch reveal. Every rock protector is different. And in this case, we had the bottom of this one where the molding was. It was not straight. It actually had a little bit of a bow in it. So it made getting a bottom gap a little bit more difficult. Now, I mentioned in the beginning of the video that you could do this on any type of RV. And what you can do is, and I'll put a link and I'll show a little picture of what it looks like in here. But you can buy this material in bulk on Amazon. And a piece that's about four feet wide by eight feet costs about $125. And you could easily take that and cut that and apply it to the front of a regular non-airstream RV. And you could get the same type of effect. Now, you're not going to get the little fancy edges on it that you've got here. But you would still get a really nice look. So I actually have a project in mind where I'm going to use some of that to do other areas on the Airstream, which will be in the next video. So until then... If you like this video, please give it a big thumbs up. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel, Zephyr Travels. And remember to hit that hype button. It really helps us out. So until next time... We'll see you down the road... We'll see you down the road... Where we will be protecting front of our Airstream from rocks. Bye, everybody. Bye.