This black Legacy GT... requires many pictures

Late Tuesday night, a black 2005 Subaru Legacy GT came into my garage. I assure you it's actually black. It came in with a snail on the roof. That's right, a snail. I wish I took a picture, but I didn't. You wil all just have to take my word for it.

Believe it or not, there are actually sparkles in the paint. Who knew?



The washing begins!

I don't have any other pictures of the wash process because I didn't really bother if I'm honest. So i'll just give you the short details.

Wheels got P21S wheel gel. Tires and wheel wells got Meguiar's super degreaser. Washed the paint with CG Maxi Suds II (my last bit of it) and MS SGS as my APC.



Clayed it inside with ONR clay lube and sonus green clay bar.



Ye fabled sparkles! THEY ARE ALIVE.



This just looks really cool. It's my very unsuccessful attempt at trying to get a picture of swirl marks.



This worked a little better, but the hood was much, much worse.



Yup, much worse.



Got out the good ol' PO203S and power finished this with a DD green pad. As terrible and infuriating as this sounds, the swirls on the paint are caused by me wiping it with a really fluffy towel. STUPID SUBARU PAINT. Here's another example.



At least the sparkles are back



Even beter than 50/50 shots!



And we're black again



Oh my, what happened here?



Oh WOW, what happened here? :afro:



The start...



And finished the PO203S with PO85RD. Speaking of PO85RD, I worked this thing down for ages. It took so long that my hair has grown past my eyeballs.

Now let's get some more correction pictures!





SIKKKK



M105 on orange
PO203S on green
PO85Rd on blue





Ahh, progress. That's right, I did have a five gallon bucket of Kikkoman soy sauce at one time. You don't have stare.



To the other side!



That's actually polish residue. These extra fluffy towels don't do a great job at wiping.



So my least favorite thing to polish is most certainly the roof. The lower part of the door panels come in a close second, but the roofs are the worst. I am nowhere near tall enough to efficiently do it without a ladder. With this gigantic wagon, I looked to my right and saw THIS.



STAR HEAVY SIGH STAR

While I was up there, I took this.





And then I finished.



There was a lot of shiny up here. I am a little disappointed nobody will really notice.

ON TO THE REST OF THE CAR!



For those of you who are wondering why I have tape in all my pictures, I use it to focus the camera. Petrucci_M3 taught me this trick. It works quite well, but I think my lighting is not as good as his positioning.



I just noticed now. That's pretty damn sparkly.



Fenders are really bad for some reason. Why is that?




And that makes it all around the car!




These are just fun to look at before I had to clean everything up.



All the tape created one tape ball so big that not even this might Legacy GT could swallow it.



Engine bay was cleaned earlier with Meguiar's super degreaser and dressed with Meguiar's hyper dressing.



Cleaned up the windows with Sprayway glass cleaner, gave the car an ONR was after polishing, and got all the tape lines off with tarminator. I just use all of this as a combination rather than completely washing the car again or working really hard to make sure all the tape lines are gone.

LSP is DG 601+105.

I think we're ready to go outside now.





Wheels were washed with said items from many scroll ups before. Protection is Rejex and tires got Gloss-It tire gel.



This dreaded roof.... looks pretty good!




This was actually really hard to polish seeing as how the bumper stuck out so much. I'm so glad I had a rotary extension.












And now this clean car has clean friends

Also left me with a huge mess in the garage.




That is all.

This took me three and a half days with 9 hours on the first day, 7.5 on the next, 10 on the third, and 4 more on the last for a grand total of 30.5 hours of back breaking work. I am very pleased at the outcome, and so is the owner.

Thanks for reading and as always, comments and critique is always appreciated. Now, I will go rest.

 

dude, that's a lot of hard work! Well done! I hope you got paid well for that one, I'd be tired from doing all this hard work.

 

Nice work. I also have a black legacy and its hard to maintain.

 

ditto

nice correction, that's a really nice outcome considering the quality of paint you're working with. i really dislike our Legacy's paint, especially considering how we received it from the factory- disaster.

 

Yikes is that normally the amount of polish you use on the fender? I can do an entire side of the car with that amount

 

Something went wacky with the breakdown, I think his pad got gummed up. Too much polish doesnt look like that, even with an overloaded pad your still going to get a nice ribbon effect on breakdown just takes longer.

Nice work, that is annoying paint to work on:thumb:

 

Awesome work man.

 

Ha, this car belongs to my friend, so I got a grand total of $0. It was for the joy.

I can imagine. If this thing swirls with the slightest wipe, I'd hate to dry it even with good towels.

Subaru paint.....

It was the very last bit of the car, so I just decided I don't want to wash and spin dry this pad. I just went with it and let it break down at a crappier and more inconsistent rate. It looks like too much because I purposely overexposed all the pictures in order to get better swirl pictures.

Thanks!

Thank you, sir!

 

Awesome job, clearly a lot of work went into that job.

 

That one big favor you gave to your friend then...because none of my friends get free paint corrections...

 

Sure was. My hands were shaky the rest of that day, hahaha.

I treat all my good friends very well, and this is just a small thing I can do for them. I'm always happy to help!

 

Nice work, and very generous of you. That's a nice looking car though. I :heart: wagons

 

Amazing work it looks great

 

Hey,
nice work, black is a PITA to keep clean and to finish.

I have a blue Legacy Gt and I'm really liking the wheels on your friend's wagon, do you know what they are?

Also, has your friend had their black wagon lowered, and if so, what springs, shocks etc are on it?

Thanks in advance.

-Craig

 

Great work, Ben!

 

My washer/dryer looks exactly the same afterwards. haha. Car looks great!

 

Wheels are Rota something. I'm sure you can find it on their website. I believe it's the one that look like Prodrive P1s I forget what. They're 18" offset 48. It's lowered on kg/mm coilovers.

Thank, Denzil

It's worse when it's being used, and stuff vibrates off, haha.

 

You are very brave to work on Subaru paint I usually turn them down lol

 

wow great job!

 

lol.... never again...!

xie xie, phil