Our new 2016 Troll came with a very rusty heater outlet on the Truma Ultraheat dual fuel heater. I decided to try and find a matching, suitable heat resistant paint so that I could restore it to near-new condition. There are so many UHT or VHT paints on the market, but nearly all are either too black or too pale grey. And many are too expensive as well!! In the end I found a pretty good match for colour in a 600C-proof spray paint at a reasonable price.

I took off the front panel and masked up the lower pale silver section.I then rubbed down the rusty section, starting with a wire brush and working down to 400 grit wet and dry. I didn't take off all the paint, just rubbed it down until it was nice and "flat" and keyed for spraying. I then treated the rusty areas with rust treatment. A final 400 grit wet rub down, dry overnight and then respray. The paint needed to be, ideally, baked for an hour at 180C to get it to off-gas all the solvent. Hmmm. Too big for the oven in the house (and not sure I'd be popular for stinking the place out). Aha! I have an outdoor barbecue that can run on gas and has a temperature gauge on the top. The fire front fitted perfectly into the BBQ. I ran it up to 200C and then popped the fire front inside (all masking tape and paper removed) and ran it for twenty minutes at as near to 180C as I could manage (definitely not higher as it could melt the Truma badge on the front...) before turning it off and leaving it to cool. Seemed to work really well and I hope it now won't smell too bad when used in the caravan.

I am really pleased with the result - a pretty good match to the original. The paint is called XHT Extremely High Temperature Paint and made by MP Essentials - the colour is Graphite. I bought it from Amazon for £11.99 (I have Prime, so free postage)

Cheers, Simon

The quality of finish is not as good as it used to be for sure. The galvanised frame is the biggest improvement on modern Tourings, i feel. Everything else - not as good as our older Tritons were...