S
STiFTW
Guest
It has been a while, mainly because I have been spending all my time racing, modifying (and fixing) my car, but this was a job that I made time to take on. The owner, who is a friend, is currently in Afghanistan, and has been there for quite a while and his wife contacted me to help do something special with his car as a surprise when he comes home. It had been a while since I had last seen the car, and I knew it was going to be a project, but I think I underestimated it a bit. The car is a 05 Subaru Legacy GT (a car that is quite familiar to me) so I figured I would give it a go and see what I could do.
This car has been his pride and joy, and he has put quite a bit of money into go-fast parts. It is no slouch for sure, very much a sleeper on the street.
The best part of this job is that I was able to have the car for as long as I wanted, so I ended up doing the correction over the course of a week trying to work around some oppressively hot weather and my schedule which made all the difference. With around 30 hours into the job it worked out really well to split up the job and put in 4-5 hours at a time in the evenings, and a few long days.
Condition of the car upon pickup:
Paint is quite dull, more oxidation than swirls, but still a fair amount of swirls and scratches to work with. I was shooting for 85-90% correction, after an inspection I was a bit unsure of how much I would be able to get out.
Trim was quite faded as well, but I was excited to give Solution Finish a go on some faded trim to showcase what it can do.
The interior of the car quickly became the primary focus of the detail, with a number of kids and a previous owner I decided to work on the interior first before doing any paint correction.
The car was washed at night (so much cooler to work at night with heat indexes in the 118 range). I didn’t take pictures, but CG Citrus was used at stripping strength, then CarPro Iron-X (The car bleed like a stuck pig) and clay with Meg’s Blue clay. Although the car had a lot of iron contamination, I was pleasantly surprised the surface contamination was not that bad, and claying went very quickly.
These scratches were right under the drivers side mirror, I was very unsure how they would come out. I had warned the wife that polishing had the potential to accentuate some of the imperfections but we decided to give it a shot.
The metro vac is going to get a workout on this one
Dash was dusty, and would get degreasing with OPC
I ended up unbolting the front seats to get everything out from under them. It became clear a soda or two have been spilled down the side of the seat, so the extractor was coming out next. (the socket was not mine).
Back seat came out as well, kids get junk in the strangest places.
This is just the cleaning from the drivers seat and dash …
And the extractor water … a lot of soda came out of the carpet in the back as well.
Interior cleaned up
So much cleaner!
This came off the back window
Headlights were going to need some love as well, a bit oxidized
Paint condition
Dialing in the process, this paint was very challenging to photograph for some reason. The combination I settled in on was Wolfgang TSR and an orange hydrotech pad on a rotary 6 passes ~ 1000 rpm. Always a winning combination on 05-06 Subaru paint and finishes very well.
After polishing and an Car Pro Eraser wipe down but no LSP
Humm, I missed the clouds in the paint.
Paint came out much much better than I was expecting
Remember those scratches … they came out 100% !!!
Next step was to apply Opti Guard coating, as I had an old stash that I am trying to go through. Though I have never had problems in the past using the Rasky method, I did apply it at night and not under the best lighting conditions. The next day I was sad to see I had high spot streaks in a number of different spots (below)
Well not wanting to be completely defeated, and not willing to return the car with ugly dark streaks in it I asked for a few more days to figure it out. I decided to test out some PO85RD (I feel so old I am still using product that is now rebranded), but it worked amazingly well. 3 passes with 85RD and it lightened everything up and took off all the high spots. Not wanting to have a high spot show up later, as this paint was difficult to get a good read on, I decided to give the whole car a once over with 85RD.
Solution Finish for the win!!
Headlights cleaned up with some B&S Yellow pads and Carpro Fixer.
Thanks for looking
I will update with the owner’s reaction when he gets home!
Edit, I should mention that many of you will recognize me as LegacyGT from other forums, though I have been pretty inactive for the past 12 months. Great to see everyone here
This car has been his pride and joy, and he has put quite a bit of money into go-fast parts. It is no slouch for sure, very much a sleeper on the street.
The best part of this job is that I was able to have the car for as long as I wanted, so I ended up doing the correction over the course of a week trying to work around some oppressively hot weather and my schedule which made all the difference. With around 30 hours into the job it worked out really well to split up the job and put in 4-5 hours at a time in the evenings, and a few long days.
Condition of the car upon pickup:
Paint is quite dull, more oxidation than swirls, but still a fair amount of swirls and scratches to work with. I was shooting for 85-90% correction, after an inspection I was a bit unsure of how much I would be able to get out.
Trim was quite faded as well, but I was excited to give Solution Finish a go on some faded trim to showcase what it can do.
The interior of the car quickly became the primary focus of the detail, with a number of kids and a previous owner I decided to work on the interior first before doing any paint correction.
The car was washed at night (so much cooler to work at night with heat indexes in the 118 range). I didn’t take pictures, but CG Citrus was used at stripping strength, then CarPro Iron-X (The car bleed like a stuck pig) and clay with Meg’s Blue clay. Although the car had a lot of iron contamination, I was pleasantly surprised the surface contamination was not that bad, and claying went very quickly.
These scratches were right under the drivers side mirror, I was very unsure how they would come out. I had warned the wife that polishing had the potential to accentuate some of the imperfections but we decided to give it a shot.
The metro vac is going to get a workout on this one
Dash was dusty, and would get degreasing with OPC
I ended up unbolting the front seats to get everything out from under them. It became clear a soda or two have been spilled down the side of the seat, so the extractor was coming out next. (the socket was not mine).
Back seat came out as well, kids get junk in the strangest places.
This is just the cleaning from the drivers seat and dash …
And the extractor water … a lot of soda came out of the carpet in the back as well.
Interior cleaned up
So much cleaner!
This came off the back window
Headlights were going to need some love as well, a bit oxidized
Paint condition
Dialing in the process, this paint was very challenging to photograph for some reason. The combination I settled in on was Wolfgang TSR and an orange hydrotech pad on a rotary 6 passes ~ 1000 rpm. Always a winning combination on 05-06 Subaru paint and finishes very well.
After polishing and an Car Pro Eraser wipe down but no LSP
Humm, I missed the clouds in the paint.
Paint came out much much better than I was expecting
Remember those scratches … they came out 100% !!!
Next step was to apply Opti Guard coating, as I had an old stash that I am trying to go through. Though I have never had problems in the past using the Rasky method, I did apply it at night and not under the best lighting conditions. The next day I was sad to see I had high spot streaks in a number of different spots (below)
Well not wanting to be completely defeated, and not willing to return the car with ugly dark streaks in it I asked for a few more days to figure it out. I decided to test out some PO85RD (I feel so old I am still using product that is now rebranded), but it worked amazingly well. 3 passes with 85RD and it lightened everything up and took off all the high spots. Not wanting to have a high spot show up later, as this paint was difficult to get a good read on, I decided to give the whole car a once over with 85RD.
Solution Finish for the win!!
Headlights cleaned up with some B&S Yellow pads and Carpro Fixer.
Thanks for looking
I will update with the owner’s reaction when he gets home!Edit, I should mention that many of you will recognize me as LegacyGT from other forums, though I have been pretty inactive for the past 12 months. Great to see everyone here
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. I hope all is going very well buddy!!!