Is Airstream selling a defective product?
What’s this? It’s the aluminum skin of my Airstream Travel Trailer, showing signs of a production defect just a few months after I took delivery. This defect, filiform corrosion, is a process that afflicts aluminum that has suffered a breach in the protective Clear Coat coating applied by Alcoa, the supplier of the lightweight metal used by Airstream to skin its trailers. It often shows up around rivet heads and the edges of aluminum panels. Let’s see where else my Airstream is starting to look a little rough around the edges. It doesn’t just affect the trailer’s skin; this is the grab handle outside the door. Notice how it’s covered with creeping crud. Nice. Moving around to the back of the trailer, let’s take a look at the picture window that frames the dinette area. In this close-up there appears to be rust — the conventional, red kind — around one of the rivets. This does not make me happy. In this shot you can see more of the corrosion, as well as a bit of the discoloration of t
