Caravan & Motorhome Detailing Before a Road Trip: What to Check

Most caravans and motorhomes sit in storage for months between trips — which means by the time you’re packing for a getaway, dust, UV damage and the odd bit of mould have usually had a long, undisturbed run at the exterior and interior. A pre-trip detail catches all of that before it becomes a problem on the road.

Why caravans need different care to a car

A caravan or motorhome has a lot more exposed surface area than a car, most of it flat and sun-facing — roof, awning box, sides — which means UV chalking and oxidation show up faster than on a vehicle’s curved panels. Add long stretches parked outside or in storage, and you get a combination cars rarely deal with: heavy dust build-up, water spotting around seals and vents, and mould or mildew in gaskets that haven’t seen airflow in a while.

A DIY pre-trip checklist

If you’d rather tackle some of this yourself before booking a professional detail, here’s how to do it properly.

Know your caravan’s construction first

Caravans aren’t all built the same way, and the body material changes how you should wash it:

• Fibreglass with duco paint — behaves like car paint. It can be polished, waxed or ceramic coated, and it’s just as prone to marking if soap is left to dry on it.
• Aluminium cladding — smooth sheet or ribbed panels, sometimes with checkerplate (diamond-tread) stone-guard panels lower down near the wheel arches. More scratch-resistant than duco, but rough scrubbing will still show up as swirl marks once you’ve waxed or coated it.
• Horizontal aluminium cladding — the overlapping panel joins trap grit that a simple top-down rinse won’t shift out.

Roof first

Get a ladder up and pressure wash the roof before touching the body, working top to bottom — this stops dirty roof runoff re-soiling panels you’ve already cleaned lower down.

Know your roof material before you clean it. Rubber roofs (EPDM or TPO) are damaged by petroleum-based cleaners and solvents — use a cleaner rated for rubber roofs specifically. Fibreglass roofs can handle a standard wash and can be polished or waxed. While you’re up there, run a hand along all the seals — roof vents, air conditioner surround, antenna mounts, and the awning box — feeling for anything that’s gone hard, cracked, or lifted at the edge, since that’s where water gets in. A soft brush and mild soapy water is enough to clean the seals themselves; avoid anything abrasive that could nick the sealant. If you find a seal that’s cracked or lifting, don’t ignore it — a small gap is how slow water damage starts, and it’s far cheaper to reseal now than repair delamination later.

Washing the body

For anything bigger than a small pop-top, scrubbing panel-by-panel with a bucket and mitt is a lot of work. A foam cannon attachment for your pressure washer (widely available — Supercheap Auto stocks a few) makes covering a full-size van much faster: spray foam over a section, then agitate it with a broom instead of a mitt so you can reach without a ladder.

• Keep a broom dedicated to the caravan only, and never let it touch the ground — grit picked up off the ground is exactly what scratches paint, which defeats the purpose of a soft-touch wash.
• For the actual scrubbing pad, a Sabco White Utility Pad (from Bunnings) is safe on both duco paint and aluminium cladding, and can be fitted to a pole or the broom head for reach.
• If your van has horizontal aluminium cladding, pressure wash top to bottom, then go over the same section again from the bottom up at an angle — this forces water up and out of the overlapping gaps rather than just running down the face, which flushes out grit a straight-down rinse leaves behind.
• Don’t let the soap dry on the surface — work in manageable sections and rinse each one before moving to the next, especially in SA’s heat. Soap left to dry leaves marks that are genuinely hard to shift afterwards.

Drying

Don’t let a van this size air-dry — water spots are worse over a large flat panel than on a car, and left long enough they etch into the surface. Use the biggest microfibre drying towel you can get; a 700 x 500mm towel (e.g. Bowden’s Own Twisted Pro Sucker from Supercheap Auto) covers far more ground per pass than a car-sized cloth. To dry the roof and upper panels without climbing up and down repeatedly, drape the towel over your dedicated broom to extend your reach — just keep it off the ground, same as the broom itself.

Interior refresh

• Air the van out for a few hours before you start — most of the “musty storage smell” is just trapped moisture, and ventilation alone solves a lot of it.
• Check under cushions and in wardrobes for any sign of mould, particularly in corners and against exterior walls where condensation collects. A vinegar-and-water wipe-down handles light mould on hard surfaces; anything on soft furnishings or spreading extensively is worth getting assessed properly rather than masking with a deodoriser.
• A carpet and upholstery vacuum followed by a fabric-safe odour eliminator (not just a fragrance spray, which only masks the smell) makes the biggest difference to how the van actually feels once you’re inside for a few days.
• For all the smaller interior wipe-down jobs — benchtops, cupboards, windows, dash — you don’t need anything fancy. A cheap 20-pack of microfibre cloths from Bunnings (around $6.50) is enough to work through the whole interior and just bin or wash the dirty ones as you go, rather than reusing one cloth over the whole van.

Wheels, tyres and undercarriage

• Clean wheels and wipe down the undercarriage where you can reach it — brake dust and old grime left to sit can start to etch alloy wheels over months in storage.
• Check tyre age, not just tread. Caravan tyres often cover very little distance between trips, so they can look fine on tread depth while the rubber itself has hardened and cracked from UV and ozone exposure. Most manufacturers recommend replacement around 5–6 years from the manufacture date (a four-digit code on the sidewall — e.g. 2321 means week 23 of 2021) regardless of remaining tread. This is a safety check worth doing before every big trip, not just a cosmetic one.

What’s worth leaving to a professional

DIY covers a lot of ground, but a few jobs are genuinely higher-risk or harder to get right without the right gear:

• Roof work at height — if your roof isn’t safely walkable, or the job needs more than a quick seal inspection, it’s not worth the fall risk to do it yourself.
• Resealing — matching the right sealant to your roof material and doing it so it actually stays watertight is a skill in itself; a bad reseal can trap moisture rather than keep it out.
• Ceramic coating or a full UV-protective polish — a proper application needs the surface fully decontaminated first (clay bar treatment) and the right conditions to cure, which is hard to manage on a driveway. This is what actually slows down the chalking and fading over months of sun exposure, well beyond what a wash-and-wax will do.
• Significant mould — if it’s spread beyond a light surface patch, eco-safe deep cleaning and proper odour elimination gets it fully out rather than just knocking back the smell temporarily.

Booking around trip season

Caravan and motorhome bookings pick up sharply in the lead-up to the warmer months and school holidays, when most South Australians are planning trips through the Flinders Ranges, the Riverland, or interstate. Because these jobs take longer than a standard car detail and pricing depends on the size and condition of the van, it’s worth getting a quote and booking a slot a couple of weeks out from departure rather than the week before.

How pricing works

Caravan, campervan and motorhome detailing is quoted individually rather than fixed-price, since the range in size and condition is so wide — standard pricing covers vans up to 18 ft, with larger vans quoted on request. Give us a description of your van (and photos if you have them) and we’ll get you a price.

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See more on what we cover for large vehicles on our Services & Pricing page, or give us a call to get a quote before your next trip.