lifemal & Spyral detailed 08 Legacy Spec B

After talking for a while via PM's and BB messenger, lifemal and I got together to trade some product and detail a car. He drove down last night to Seattle and stayed with his friend Adam, the owner of the car. Monday morning we all met up at my warehouse at 10am to detail this car. First, I must say it was a lot of fun, lifemal and Adam are both great guys and I had a lot of fun today while learning a few things.

I traded my pot of RBOE for a lot of Cockpit, some various chemicals and a 6 pack of Heineken. I say it was a good trade!

We only had 5 hours since Adam had to be home to do some wedding planning stuff with his fiance, so we had to tag team the car and be efficient.

Here is the car as it looked when it arrived. These pictures are right after we washed it with Poor Booy's Slick, a foam gun, 2 bucket and various brushes. Poor Boy's APC was used on the wheel and exhaust tips.







We inspected it for damage under the metal halide lights and lifemal's Brinkmann. We found a few things to correct, not much as the car was in very nice shape to begin with. Here are a few things we found.



A few light scratches


Some water etching, hard to see it on a silver car, but it is there


Some more swirl marks


More swirls and water etching


Some wax residue from the dealership


lifemal started claying the car as I taped it off




Once the claying the passenger side, hood and trunk was done, I gave the car my "purple thumb of approval" and we both broke out our FLEX's to start polishing.


The owner of the car, Adam, meanwhile was taught how to clay and put to work.






Here are a few after clay shots




We found these scratches after claying the car

We would not have time to fully correct these, so they would have to wait for another day.

My now infamous cart


We polished the car with Menz 203 on green Uber pads, the car had very few issues and correction was a breeze.
Before


After


Once we were done polishing, we applied the first layer of Jetseal and Adam and lifemal hit the interior. We ran into a problem in there that neither of us had ever seen before and we hope someone can help with this. The dash on the Subaru is a kind of rubberized plastic. When lifemal used Cockpit on the dash and was wiping it off, his knuckle caused these scratches through a MF towel! Has anyone ever seen this before? If so, how do you correct it?


After hitting it with some Natural Look on a detailing biscuit, this was the result. Not much better.


Yet another hit of Natural Look yielded this result, it is not getting better


After we put a second coat of Jetseal we realized we were in a serious time crunch, so we put the camera down and concentrated on getting a layer of RBOE on the car. Once it was applied and wiped off, I followed up with a treatment of Rd Mist and we rolled the car out to check it out in the mid-day sun!

The results are simply gorgeous!
















The end result? A very happy owner!

He had that shit-eating-grin on his face the entire time!





All in all it was a great day. 5 hours and two detailers can make short work of a car! I got to meet and work with a fellow board member, have a great time, trade off for some new product, detail a sweet car and make a few new friends in the process! You got to love that!

 

Looks good! Who's POS GTO is that in the background? I have never seen scratching like that in the dash, very VERY weird.

 

Dammit, it's a Monaro! lol

Yeah, the dash scratching has me baffled as well. All he used was cockpit and a clean MF. Nothing else.

 

Looks good, awesome detail. Must have been nice detailing with someone else. Edit your title by the way, it's a legacy spec B

 

Yea yea sure you poser! I wanna see the Monaro emblem black or black chrome for some reason. Do me a photoshop. PRONTO!

 

Man that dashboard thing is pretty nutty. I've never seen anything like that before either. Phil (DD) has an STI - maybe the dashboard is made out of similar stuff and he can help with the problem?

Aren't those Spec Bs pretty rare cars? I'm far from a Subaru expert, but I think it's got some variant of an STI drivetrain in it. Neat car.

Anyway, the car looks gorgeous. RBOE over Jetseal is a pretty unbeatable combo for looks.

 

The Spec B's are rare cars, I think 5,000 were made.

I can't change the title, maybe a moderator could do it for me?

Reflect, I just saw a set of black chrome Holden badges. I think it would be too much black on my car.

 

Very nice job on the Subaru, the silver looks very nice! :mounty: :applause2:

Once we were done polishing, we applied the first layer of Jetseal and Adam and lifemal hit the interior. We ran into a problem in there that neither of us had ever seen before and we hope someone can help with this. The dash on the Subaru is a kind of rubberized plastic. When lifemal used Cockpit on the dash and was wiping it off, his knuckle caused these scratches through a MF towel! Has anyone ever seen this before? If so, how do you correct it?

I work on Subies on a daily basis and have not experienced this. I know several people to own them, including myself, and have not seen a problem like this in the field either.

Judging from your photo, there are scratches going in every direction on that dash. Very unique dressing application method. :shead: My best guess would be either the MF had some foreign material in it or some extremely rough and dry hands (perhaps with a ring) rubbed through a thin MF. :shrug: By the looks of the damage, - IMO, I'm judging you are going to have to find a trim repair stick (similar to a furniture repair stick) to try to "re-color" the area. These work well for small areas, not sure about the middle of the dash? :gasp: Please keep us posted on your findings.

What He said...:thumb:

 

Other than the messed up dash you guys did some great work!

 

My wife and I own a Legacy, and I've never seen anything like that on the dash of our car.

maybe try some 1Z gummi on it?

do you have the offending MF still?

Looks like the guy just got the car, maybe have him contact the dealership and ask if there were any imperfections that were covered up prior to the sale?

Baffled. That would drive me nuts until resolved if it were my car

 

I am beginning to think this was previous damage that was covered up and lifemal just exposed it by cleaning it. It was a brand new DD microfiber and he had no rings or anything on his hands. I mean, Adam has had the car for 2 weeks and this is the first detail it has had. The car was bought used, so who knows. I wasn't in the car when it happened, I was applying Jetseal, but it took a matter of seconds with lifemal and the owner in the car. Something is not right.

When lifemal gets home, I am sure he will chime in. He owns a Subie too, so I am sure he knows how to handle their interiors.

 

you know, looking at it more, there is no way he would have applied dressing like that, all higgly-piggly and such. The other question is, why didn't it do it anywhere else? I would have some questions for the dealership.

 

spec b's are sweet. sti engine and equipped with subaru intelligent drive. nice detail

 

Good job dude!! Looked like alot of fun, I'm suprised you have not gotten authorization from the place to put alot of lights over that area you work in.

 

My halogen work light set up crapped out on me Sunday. I have to figure out why all 4 bulbs are dead and they do nothing!

The area has 2 huge metal halide lights above it and the ceiling is 40 feet high..lol..not much I can do but halogen work lights.

 

Well done guys, the vehicle looks great...that dash issue is quite odd though, don't have a clue as to how to help you :sorry:

Let me know how you make out with the dash, I'm curious.

 

Looks great guys. It's awesome that you two can work together like this. As for the dash issue, I am with you on the hunch that it was preexisting damage, as an MF could almost never cause that damage.

As the others mentioned I am very curious to hear the outcome.

 

Finally got home! It was a great day.

As far as the dash issue, I have no rings on my hand, and didn't save the MF towel but it was fairly plush and clean. The owner is going to contact the dealership and see if there was a dressing or something they used on the dash, and if so, then raise some hell. I own a 2003 Impreza WRX, and have detailed 2005, 2006 WRX's, a 2006 STi, and a 2007 STi limited and never ONCE ran into this. I'm baffled. Luckily Adam is a close friend of mine and isn't too upset -- I offered a few bucks to help get it fixed if it was indeed my screw up. Hopefully some form of warranty will fix it! Haha. In the sunlight it's barely noticeable at all -- we'll get it taken care of though.

As far as the car, yes it is fairly rare. The Spec B comes with Bilstein suspension and the STi 6spd transmission minus the DCCD. H does Si-Drive though, which has Intelligent, Sport and Sport Sharp modes. It gets up and moves! (Not nearly as fast as my car, though. haha)

Tom -- thanks again. We had a blast and cannot wait for you to come up to our shop or my next visit down to you! We'll set up a sit in for a car that you can give a hand with sometime.

 

Looks great guys but too bad about the dash.

 

Great to see another legacy I love seeing Legacies. thnx for sharing.

I did not experience that problem on the dash when I clean it.

BTW, are you going to change the title of the post since its a legacy, not an impreza?