BagRidersJohn

I tackled the C-pillars last night which are two-piece design and therefore require a little disassembly before they can be recovered. Here you can see the way these pieces are bonded together using plastic welding. The piece that I'm holding has not been modified yet, whereas the piece on the table is ready for trim work. The melted plastic with an orange line next to it is an example of the plastic weld bond. Using some abrasive tool like a dremel, die grinder or like I have here just a regular drill with a grinding wheel attachment, remove just the melted material to expose the underlying boss of the tan plastic piece. After repeating this for each of the weld joints, the pieces will separate easily. They can be rejoined by a high strength adhesive over the remaining boss which is exactly what I did later on. With the pieces separated, the upper part can be recovered and then rejoined to the lower piece using high strength plastic adhesive. The only thing to really make note of here is when wrapping the material over the bottom edge of the top portion of the panel (i.e., the one being trimmed), be sure to come back with a razor blade and cut out around the plastic bosses in order to appropriately locate the parts when reassembling as they will "clip" back together. And there you have it, all back together! Oh and I also snagged a quick photo of the B-pillar for the sake of completion Tonight I'm going to try to get the whole cabin back together. Wish me luck!

Happy Monday friends! I hope you all had a great weekend. I spent the better part of Sunday working on my Outback and made some good progress! My carpet finished drying so I started by wrestling that thing into the car so I'd stop tripping over it as I run around my shop I went to throw on my shop shirt that I leave hanging near the door and this fella came crawling out to say hello I'm not a fan of spiders so this was not a great start to my day. I figured it was a good idea to upholster the sunroof panel before I forgot about it like I did one time on another car. After some head scratching I managed to get the thing out of its rails, which was a different process than my specB. The "stops" that prevent the panel from sliding out in the back are fastened to the metal track/rails by small phillips head screws. I'd venture a guess that the "proper" removal process involves dropping the rails but I was able to remove the stops with a makeshift low profile right-angle screwdriver i.e., vice grips and a properly sized bit. With the stops out of the way, the panel slid right out. I chose to go over the existing material which, like the headliner, is foam backed. No "in progress" photos here but there's nothing to it... just apply ample spray adhesive and carefully apply and trim the fabric; simple as that! Behold the panel reinstalled in the vehicle! Next, I finished up with the headliner. I'm using cabin and map lights from an 08-14 STI that are interchangeable with the Legacy GT and come in black from the factory. The rest of the parts are painted. With a helping hand from my wife, we wrangled the headliner back into the vehicle through the hatch.... much easier than a sedan!! I then moved onto trimming up the pillars. For the A-pillars, I remove the factory fabric and upholster over the plastic form. I use the removed fabric as a template for the new material. Ta-daaaa No pictures of the B-pillars Sorry! I was growing tired of upholstery work so decided to put the rear "cabin / trunk area" back together. One of the side panels had a funky smell coming from the back side of it, presumably some rodents had been in there at some point, so I stripped all the factory insulation (some type of recylcled denim-like material in mat form) and scrubbed the panel down with a sponge and simple green. No more smell, yay! Instead of putting the panel back in without the insulation, I applied some thick adhesive-backed foam that I had kickin' around from a prior project (I think I used them on inner door skins??) which is a bit beefier than the factory stuff. It is really coming together! All that torn up material made me cringe so I treated myself to a brand spankin' new factory cargo mat! That does it for today! Next on the agenda is upholstering the C/D piillars and putting the rest of the interior back together. I have some backlogged work on other family vehicles to get done so once the interior stuff is finished, this car goes out of the shop so I can catch up on that work before it comes back in for the motor work. One day at a time!!

If its from the same year then all should be a direct swap. As others have said, discharge the battery. I find it helpful to tip the seat backwards and access the plugs from the front. They can sometimes be a PITA to get unplugged, just take your time. I believe that later model years have a position sensor that is riveted to the seat slider frame so if you got a seat e.g. from an 06-09 then it may have that sensor and your chassis wont have a plug for it... maybe

Thanks! Just keep working away and you’ll get there [emoji4] In this case I chose to do this stuff prior to mechanicals ie engine rebuild. I have a never ending list of car stuff, but always having another car to drive makes it way more reasonable and less stressful to knock out projects a couple hours at a time! Between work and family my shop hours are limited and often just cut into sleep haha Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

On this one I went over the existing fabric which is usually how I go about it when its bonded well and otherwise free of imperfections. It makes a good foundation for the new material! The material I used is thin and not backed unlike typical "headliner fabric" you'd find at the fabric store. Thank you! The craziest I'll go with this one after I finish doing all the interior work, engine rebuild and whatever maintenance stuff is just a mild lift, a more aggressive wheel/tire combo, maybe fab an exhaust and maybe (maybe!!!!) a low-effort respray to freshen up the exterior and get away from the champagne color that I'm not entirely in love with I am loosely planning my next bigger project that my wife wants to be involved with... she really loves C3 Corvettes so I've been tossing around the idea of a building what I'd dub a "2JC3"... we'll see I'm sure its been done before but that's no deterrent for me; I build stuff for fun and to say "I did it!" --- Last night after another longer than usual day at work I tackled the carpet which is now drying. I'm hopeful i'll be able to finish upholstery work tonight and start reassembly tomorrow. I'll walk through my steps for "super cleaning" a carpet. The first couple photos are the same as a couple posts ago but including them here for the completeness factor. Firstly, it helps but is not necessary to have the carpet out of the car. I begin by removing any trash/debris by hand and then doing a thorough vacuum to get the top-most level of dirt. Here is the side-by-side of vacuumed and not vacuumed: Next, I use a combination of a bristle brushes to loosen up the stubborn ground in dirt. I have a handheld brush that I like a lot and a few drill attachments like the one pictured here that do wonders. Again, this is to agitate and free up the stubborn dirt that didn't get picked up with the initial vacuum. After loosening everything up, I vacuum the carpet again. This photo is after finishing this stage. Now you should have a carpet that is free of dirt and debris, leaving only stains or REALLY stubborn dirt that must be removed with liquid cleaner and more agitation, here are some examples: The final and perhaps most rewarding stage is shampooing and vacuuming the carpet. I use carpet cleaning detergent in a mini carpet extractor along with the same carpet cleaning detergent in a spray bottle that I use to concentrate on trouble areas and hit them with the drill-mounted brush. I fill the carpet extractor reservoir with the hot water and detergent as-per instructions then work the carpet in sections. I first spray the entire area with the hot water / detergent mixture, then hit the really troublesome spots with the spray bottle detergent and follow that up with the drill-mounted brush. From there, I just use the carpet extractor over and over again until the sudsy water that is sucks up is no longer brown and nasty. If you've never used a carpet extractor and have an odd passion for super cleaning like I do, I suggest you pick one up... total game changer. It is so satisfying to start with nasty brown stuff being soaked up and working it until its clean. Like most things, you get out what you put in. This is after about 2 hours across all these steps and focusing a lot on trouble areas especially in the driver-side footwell. You can see my mini carpet extractor in the background taking a well-earned rest!! Another (terribly lit) angle, but you get the idea... this carpet is likely the cleanest its been since rolling off the lot back in 2005! That's how I go about "super cleaning" a carpet. It's a lot of work but the result is just so satisfying and really improves the feel of the interior in a way thats hard to measure by itself!

I promise this car will not get that far I do appreciate the kind words though I didn't get quite as much done last night as I wanted to -- as always there is stuff to do around the house and I'm always working late, but I did manage to get the headliner material glued down with the help of my wife. I still (obviously) have plenty of trimming and gluing to do but that is all easy to do by myself. Before After As you can see in the background, I haven't done anything with my specB since the photo I posted from early September. It is constant motivation for me to keep working away on other projects so I can get back to work on it and see it all completed!!

I'll report in with the current state of my '07 specB which is currently on hold and taking up half my shop space while I button up the family fleet before the snow starts to fall here in VT Check out my build thread for progress pics and updates!

I appreciate the kind words my friend but don't get too excited, this one is solely a daily/commuter This Outback is "replacing" the daily driver duties of my specB since I went and decided to respray that one, put it on air suspension, and refresh the entire rear end "while I was at it" Anyhow, I've been busy with family stuff over the last few days but did get a bit of garage time to make some headway. With the interior out, I vacuumed, scrubbed, vacuumed and cleaned the chassis with diluted Simple Green (a generic all purpose cleaner). I don't understand how vehicles get so damn dirty UNDER the carpet, but it is always the case somehow, and I just have to clean it. I painted a bunch of interior parts black to match the black ultrasuede material I'm doing my pillars/headliner with. As with any painting project, the key to long term success is surface preparation. So I clean with soapy water first, then W&G remover, then scuff with a maroon pad, then W&G remover until it wipes clean. I spray the parts with a clear adhesion promoter before the color coat. I prefer using SEM Trim Black but have also used Duplicolor Vinyl & Fabric paint with good results too. It really just comes down to the surface prep being done adequately. Anyow, here are some black parts, neato I also gave the carpet a relatively thorough vacuuming which is only "stage one" of the carpet cleaning process. Next up is scrubbing with a bristle brush to loosen up the stubborn debris, vacuuming again, then shampoo & more scrubbing (either with a brush on a drill or a DA depending on the severity of the grime) and finally sucking up all the dirty shampoo with the hot water carpet extractor. The result from all of this is a really clean, good smelling carpet. I've got a set of Weathertech floor mats to put in which will protect my time investment over the winter. Before (I already did one side, obviously) After I'll follow up with the "finished" photo once I complete the aforementioned scrubbing/shampoo/extraction process. It is very satisfying, but a lot of work!! Lastly, I did a "bad body work delete" mod Like I mentioned in my first post, the p/o did some REAL questionable (I'll be honest.... it was just downright bad) body work in attempts to repair what I guess was sideswiping a parking lot bollard. Part of that process was using the rattlecan "matched" (not even close) spraypaint on the QP trim piece. Well, it came out terrible, so I removed the trim piece and got one from the scrapyard, but there was a ton and I mean a TON of nasty overspray on the QP and bumper. You can kinda see it in the photos on the first post. Fortunately for me, there was clearly no surface prep (read: scuffing) done, so I was able to remove all the overspray with some lacquer thinner on a rag and some good old fashioned elbow grease. I also hung (but not bolted) the replacement LF fender on the chassis, mostly to get it out of the way, but also to trick myself into thinking I got more work done than I really did Tonight, my favorite person in the whole wide world, my super awesome wife, is going to be the extra set of hands that is really helpful when upholstering a headliner. While the glue is setting on that, I'm going to knock out the shampooing on the carpet so it can dry for a couple days with the aid of a fan. Getting those things out of the way will set me up for being able to reinstall the carpet and headliner this week and the rest of the interior will go in shortly thereafter, or whenever I find the time to upholster the pillars. I'm very excited to see the outcome i.e., a very clean, all black interior. I'll get the car out of my shop for a couple days so I can knock out some maintenance on our other vehicles, then the EJ259 comes out of this guy for a rebuild. I'm leaning towards doing valve stem seals as well as the typical HG job but we'll see how I'm feeling when the time comes. The most important thing for me is having this vehicle ready before the snow hits, so I do have a deadline rapidly approaching here in northern VT Thanks for reading!

Thanks! Yeah it is definitely a "space hog" at least for a little while! -- I wanted to make something clear -- my intention with this project isn't to save a bunch of dough or to come out with something wildly different or exciting. As odd as it may be to some, I enjoy this sort of tinkering and, as I tried to highlight in my first post, the idea to "combine" these two cars was really the result of having one car (blue car) that was rotted beyond reasonable repair. I knew I had to scrap it, so when the opportunity to at least utilize it in some way it just felt like a silver lining in an otherwise "not so great" scenario. Yeah its a decent amount of work but like I said, I find it enjoyable Anyhow! Yesterday was a big day- the salvage yard wrecker came by and towed away my blue car. I got a few bucks for it but the most value came from my wife being super happy it was finally gone Some little progress on the gold car... I replaced the "window rain guard" whatever its called... the big long one that runs from the front to the back of the car. It was dented real bad so I pulled the part off blue car before it went away. It's the little things, ya know? While tearing apart gold car, I found a spray can of "color match" paint that the p/o left in there. I decided to do some quick repairs on a couple small areas that could use it. The LF door sill had some surface rust that I ground down and treated and proceeded to finish. Most of this area gets covered up by the trim piece and the hard tape edge falls on a metal seam. Perfect? Definitely not! But not bad for a quick repair to get rid of some ugly rust! Similarly, the LF door I got from the salvage yard had a nasty rust bubble that looked like it had formed over many years from some deep scratch that was never repaired. Just like the door sill, I ground it down to bare metal and repaired the area so it was nice and smooth. Not wanting to respray the entire door I figured I'd do the best blend I could muster with spray cans. This looks like it was before I sprayed clear but you get the idea. Rolling paper backwards like this is a good way of getting a soft edge which can be easily sanded out with 1500-2000 into the existing panel and then buffed so the surface is nice and smooth. Unfortunately for me, it turns out that the spray can color was not even in the same ballpark as the factory paint. Oh well Lets be honest, this area is going to be covered in road grime all winter so I'm just happy to have repaired the rust compromised area. That's one less thing for me to do if I do decide to go ahead and respray the body in the future For what its worth, the actual repair came out pretty good, just the color is no where close Not pictured but I also started prepping all of the plastic pieces in the upper trim that I'll need to spray black to match the ultrasuede. Like any kind of spraying, prep is the most important so I'm cleaning and scuffing these very thoroughly and will hit them with some adhesion promoter to give the color coat a fighting chance against normal wear & tear on parts like the seatbelt anchors and grab handles. More updates will come as I continue to make progress

So that brings me up to where I'm at today. The Blue Car is stripped of any part I even considered keeping and is sitting outside my shop ready for the wrecker to come take it away. In return, I get a super happy wife so that's a big W for this guy So what's next? What's the plan?! I'm currently in "stage 1" of this car i.e., getting it up to par aesthetically. Touch up a few small areas on Gold Car chassis Install replacement doors, fender & QP trim Spray misc. interior plastic parts black Reupholster pillars / headliner in microsuede Reinstall & super clean interior The last few bits are what I'm most excited for! While I'm not going for any sort of a real head-turner here, I do love me a nice black interior. I reupholstered my specB with great success so I figured why not do the same to this car? The outcome will be a car that has a super clean and blacked-out interior, an exterior that is in "pretty good shape" and most importantly to me, a clean chassis (considering its a 15 year old New England car!!) I love doing these things that make the car "feel" nicer and newer as I sit in it about an hour every day for commuting. STAGE 2 - ENGINE Once I've got the interior/exterior of the car back together, the engine comes out for a rebuild as its definitely time for one. This particular vehicle has the oddball EJ259 motor which is pretty common around these parts (both my Outbacks have this motor). As of now the plan is to just do head gaskets, timing components, reseal the oil pan, and whatever else jumps out at me. Namely, I do NOT plan on splitting the case unless the cylinder walls look really bad. Its got about 120K on it so it shouldn't need new rings but only time will tell. I haven't found an abundance of information on EJ259 rebuilds insofar as aftermarket rebuild kits go (I use Aisin kits for EJ253 rebuilds) so I'll try to shine some light on this as I go. STAGE 3 - THE FUTURE With the engine rebuilt, the interior brought up to my preferences, and the exterior free of any major dents/dings, I have some ideas for things I'd like to do down the road (maybe next summer) such as: Moderate lift Larger tires Exhaust (I think I can make an OBX H6 exhaust work) Perhaps a "scuff and spray" color change to some nice non-metallic Grey For the last one specifically, I wouldn't do a full color change (i.e., no major repairs, no jambs, no under hood/trunk, etc.) just scuff it down, mask it off and shoot a new base/clear to the color of my choice. I am a big fan of Nardo Grey albeit I'd choose any sort of "similar-ish" grey based on the price at the paint shop if the price of a few quarts of Nardo makes me cringe. I'd go for "the best, lowest effort job I can do". Keeping in mind this is solely for fun, and to make my car more enjoyable for me to look at

So now I've got these two '05 Outback Limited sitting in my yard... one has been there for about a year. My incredibly understanding and patient wife tells me that its time to make one of them go away, so it was time to dismantle the blue car. I knew I wanted the interior, but I also pillaged various other parts that were in not-so-good condition on my Gold car. The whole mantra is to take the best of both cars and make them into one! I set aside the black leather interior for a thorough cleaning after sitting all winter The carpet had some moisture underneath it, which (fortunately) did not have any strong odor to it. So I soaked up what I could with shop rags, sprinkled some cat litter on the hard to reach areas and set up a fan to do the rest. This has been going on for about a week now and its bone dry When dismantling the Blue Car then the Gold Car, I organized all the small bits into these cheap plastic organizers. This makes reassembly go much smoother, and between the two cars I have plenty of extra fasteners Its the little things, like these clips for the grille, that make me smile. Both cars had a couple that were broken, but between the two cars there were a total of (4) that were solid! I first dismantled the Blue Car then proceeded to start stripping out the Gold Car. As I removed parts from the Gold Car that would not end up being used, I jammed them into the shell of the Blue Car sitting outside my shop. It got pretty jam packed in there. You can kinda see the gnarlyness of the Gold Car original interior in these photos It wasn't long after that that I had the Gold Car fully stripped out and ready for the reassembly process! Here you can see the damage to the left hand side of the car. I had already pulled the rear door, and you'll see why in a second! Just my luck! A Champagne Gold Outback popped up at my local salvage yard! As you can see, the LH side of this one is in good shape, so I swung by to grab the LF fender, FL door, LR door and LR quarter panel trim piece Here's some of the parts from the salvage yard (and some parts I picked off Blue Car) ready to go Ok, just a little bit more apart now and ready for the replacement panels! Look at those clean rockers, yeah baby!

You might be asking yourself "doesn't this guy already have a Daily Driver build thread?" and you'd be right. But like many enthusiasts, my "daily driver" project turned into much more and as-so, a new daily is procured and the promise to oneself begins again. To say that the story I'm about to tell was my original intention would be an outright lie. No, this project was the result of a rushed purchase and an oversight by yours truly. This all began in Fall 2019 as I began my search for a winter mobile to carry me through another VT winter, as I had mentally committed to putting my specB under the knife. I followed through on that one BIG TIME and ended up doing a whole lotta stuff that I hadn't intended on doing, or at least to the extent I ended up doing them. That car has it's own thread but to give you an idea if you haven't seen it, as 9/07/2020 it looked like this: And not to be forgotten, my specB was originally a daily driver as my other primary vehicle (currently my daily) is my 450 whp widebody, shaved bay WRX wagon. So now you probably get the picture here. I quite like these aging Subarus and they're plentiful here in VT, albeit most are in pretty rough condition. And this is exactly the starting point for my story. Here's the car I picked up in Fall 2019, what was intended to be my winter vehicle that year. Why is it all dismantled? Well, remember how I mentioned it was a "rushed purchase"? Indeed it was. These cars, especially in a desirable trim, tend to sell SUPER DUPER fast here in VT, especially as winter approaches. This one was being sold by an older gentleman and the black leather interior was in immaculate condition. The engine surely needed a rebuild, but I eagerly picked it up for < $1000 after a quick (quick!!) look-over and a test drive around the block, then proceeded to drive it a half hour home to my shop. I thought I was well on my way to a "normal person" daily driver, that is until I went to put the car up on jack stands. As I lowered the floor jack and the chassis came down onto the jack stands, my stomach dropped as the LH side of the vehicle continued to come down towards the ground. The jack stand had gone clear through the rocker panel which had rusted beyond the point of reasonable repair for a vehicle of this age. I proceeded to rip off the rocker trim panel and quarter panel trim and well, the picture speaks for itself: So that left me feeling very frustrated and notably, without a car that would pass state inspection to carry me through the winter months. At the time I was working from home a few days a week (software engineer) and fortunately the snow held off for the most part, enough for me to continue driving my lowered specB well into December. Soon thereafter, coronavirus shutdowns started here in VT so I was full-time remote and the need for a dedicated winter car became nonexistent. I focused on my specB and maintaining my wife's cars throughout the quarantine, and postponed my winter car project until recently. Throughout the summer I pondered what to do with "blue car" as it became known between my wife and I, and also keeping an eye out for another Outback. I ultimately decided that I'd seek an Outback with a clean chassis, manual transmission, and dual HVAC climate controls. So long as it had those things, I could make it work. Sometime in late August, I found the one I'd end up buying. Here it is on the day I brought it home. Worth mentioning, the passenger side (pictured) is "the good side" From what I gathered, the LH side had side-swiped one of those yellow ballards you see in parking garages and what not. The QP trim piece was damaged, along with both doors and the LF fender. There was some REAL shoddy body work on the doors to boot. Having just done a whole lot of body work on my specB I wasn't exactly eager to jump back into it, but the rest of the car ticked the boxes and I knew I could address the aesthetics at some point later. The interior was also super gnarly and of the beige/tan persuasion that I personally am not a big fan of... but I had another, super clean, black interior ready to go! This marked the beginning of OPERATION OUTBACK AMALGAMATION wherein I decided to take my two 05 Outbacks and turn them into one.

I'm deep into my winter car project but hope to have it wrapped up in "not too long" I'm gonna start a thread for this short & quick rebuild/restore project! Here's where it's at now My shop is currently very full of dismantled BL/BP chassis and parts lmao

Oh I'll get around to doing that soon enough I was hoping to get the car back on the road for some fall driving but that isn't going to happen so I'll likely end up pulling and rebuilding the engine over the winter and I'll knock out the engine bay then. Thanks! I've got this project on pause while I work on prepping my winter car and various other household projects that need to happen before the snow comes! Trust me I'm eager to get back at it and I'll update ASAP

thank you sir! big fan of your work

Yeah, it is pretty beefy. It's as 2-stage 5 horse pump on an 80 gal tank. It fills to 175 psi and pumps out 12 CFM @ 90 PSI and holds that up to 175 PSI so it fills pretty quick. I keep the wall reg at about 120PSI and regulate down at the spray gun when spraying. It keeps up with spraying no problem at all. I have a relatively cheap 6" DA that is probably my biggest "air hog" tool and I can sand non-stop and have the pump cycle on/off, so it is producing more CFM than the tool is consuming. I think your pump is on the small side for painting an all-over but you could paint in pieces for sure. You could add a tank to help boost the volume if you need to cover a large area at once, and also use a slower reducer to buy a bit more time. Having a large tank and more powerful motor means it runs less frequently, which means less moisture and less reliance on your filters to keep your air dry. I run two filters, one filter/regulator pretty close to the pump and then another further away on the branch I use for spraying-- that one is a 3 stage filter/dryer/regulator. The one closest to the pump doesn't extract much water from the pump while its running since the air is still hot at that point and it needs to cool down and condensate for the filter to do its job.

Thanks, I appreciate it! The only wagon I'm spraying is mine :lol: Don't get me wrong I do enjoy doing this but its a TON of work all on nights and weekends! The front end of my wagon is lookin pretty rough so I'm excited to freshen that up over the winter, and hopefully some other mods too, wanting to shave the engine bay a bit more

As promised, yesterday I sprayed the fiberglass kit and touched up a few small parts that got dry spray during my first go. I also resprayed the hood as it didn't come out very well because it was swinging all around while I sprayed it due to being hung from the ceiling and not weighing very much. Of course, a mosquito landed in the first coat of clear and proceeded to tear itself apart trying to fly away, so I might have to reclear the hood AGAIN if I can't get it out without sanding through to the basecoat. I'm super happy with how these parts came out. I bumped up the air pressure a bit compared to my first round of paint and got the clear laying down like glass!!! I'm going to start hanging panels this week and knocking down the clear with some 1200 grit to try to get it perfectly flat. If I can't get everything looking really nice, I'm going to re-clear the body and the doors using a bit higher air pressure like I did for the body kit, and also lay down more clear to give myself a bit more material to work with during the cut/buff. Anyhow, check it out! I started by taping around a few nutserts for the body kit then putting a layer of masking film over the entire car and cutting out/re-taping around the nutserts. I made some little "spacers" out of air line to space the body kit off from the body panels to ensure I could nice coverage on the edges without bridging the clear to the masking. Not shown, but I spent about two full days guide coating and blocking out these fiberglass parts. I knew my effort was worth it when the sealer laid down perfectly smooth making for a nice foundation for the base/clear. Nice and glossy!! I repurposed my wooden "trunk stand" to paint the small pieces that go on the front bumper and rear doors I accepted the risk of dust/debris/bugs falling onto the hood while spraying it flat and sure enough I got a mosquito. It came out super nice, I'm hoping I can sand out the mosquito to avoid re-clearing... but seeing as I only got one coat of clear on here whereas I'd really like 2 or 3, I wont be super sad if I have to reclear (only a little sad ) Next up is hanging panels back on the car and starting the process of sanding and buffing! Like I said, if I can't get the clear nice and flat then I'll reclear the body and outside of the doors (not gonna redo jams) but that's no big deal. I am really enjoying this process and loving seeing it all come together!! Thanks for the love everyone, it is really encouraging and motivating

Thanks a lot! I appreciate the kind words. Thanks, I dig it! Thank you! And same Thanks! Thanks! I'm about $1K in all paint products specifically for this car (i.e. stuff that is sprayed through a gun) and then a few hundred in disposables. A huge part of the disposables is Trizact paper, that stuff is pricey!! Either way, I think that's about what anyone should expect to spend using quality materials and "doing it right" at least for the most part. I owned my spray guns and various other autobody tools going into this project as I've painted a few small pieces as well as some repair work on my wife and other family vehicles. ---- Thanks a lot for the kind words all! It is motivating for me I spent all day yesterday preparing the body kit to spray as well as a couple small bits to touch up so gonna go knock that out today. Throughout the week I'll be working on putting the panels back on the car which is super duper exciting, but then I have to take a little break from this project and get to work on my winter car. I picked up an 05 Outback 2.5 in Limited trim that needs some love. The chassis is in good shape which is why I bought it, and it was real cheap. The interior is kinda "meh" but I have another 05 Limited Outback with a rotted chassis and clean interior / various other good parts that I'll swap over. So the plan is to pull the clean interior and whatever parts I want to keep off the one rotted car then scrap it, and swap it all over to the "good chassis" car. The good chassis car also needs motor work so I've got a bit of work ahead of me before I dive back into the specB but I'm in no rush now that the painting is done! Only real downside to waiting is that the clear hardens up quite a lot after about 7 days so it takes more time to cut, but oh well! Anyhow, off to do more painting! Thanks again for the love everyone

Thanks! I bought all the lights in my shop on Amazon. They're not super heavy duty or anything but they put off plenty of light (especially with like 20 of them) and are wayyy cheaper than the big box stores. Appreciate the compliments man! I've got a lot of color sanding to do but I'm stoked to have made it this far. Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot! I think the black sealer really did the trick for making it just a bit darker than the M1Y Subarus you see on the lot / out in the wild... I think its a color option for all 2018+ Subarus but I'm not certain... that's just what PPG Paint software says! For my first time spraying a complete car, I'm absolutely jazzed about the outcome. I'm really looking forward to seeing the whole thing after some wet sanding and polishing!! Thanks a lot!

I decided to spray the color over a black sealer. I used Southern Polyurethane products for everything except the base coat, which is PPG's "MBP" grade basecoat of Subaru's M1Y "Crimson Red Metallic". My intention with the black sealer was to spray two coats of base over this, enough to achieve coverage but allow the black sealer to darken the color up a bit. This proved successful on my test panels but the whole car I think shows a big difference! I love how it came out. The sealer laid down nice and smooth. As you may have guessed by my DIY booth setup, I don't have any fancy spray guns. For the sealer, I sprayed through a "PNTGreen" brand HVLP gun with a 1.4 tip purchased on Amazon for like $33 or something More sealer! You can see all the wood strapping and bungee cord work for the doors in this photo Did I mention it looked like a murder chamber in there? Here is my bench area after my first coat of base... notice the overspray on the walls and a bit of spillage on the bench/floor. I'm really glad I decided to do the HVAC filters for the input fans because it was nighttime by the time I was spraying base/clear and with the shop lit up like hospital room, it was a major attraction for every bug in the state it seemed like. The two fans below the overhead doors didn't exhaust as much air as I'd have liked, but it got the job done. I'm glad I bought new filters for my respirator before spraying! And here it is! In case anyone is wondering, here are the products I used throughout the process. No super high end stuff, and bought just about everything off Amazon with the exception of the paint products and even the Southern Polyurethane stuff was ordered over the phone and shipped to my door. Really great folks at SPI! Coatings Filler: Mostly Evercoat products with a few instances of 3M Bondo Gold Build primer: Southern Polyurethane 2K Regular Primer (6500 series) Sealer: Southern Polyurethanes 2K Sealer (6400 series) Base coat: PPG "MBP" grade base coat (Subaru M1Y color code) Clear coat: Southern Polyurethanes "Production Clear" with a slow activator Consumables & Equipment Duragold 3" and 6" sanding discs, 2-3/4" paper, and blocks "ZFE" Brand 3" pneumatic DA polisher (only used 3" sanding discs on this thing) "SHININGEYES" brand 6" pneumatic DA palm sander PNTGreen HVLP spray gun (primer with 1.8 tip sealer with 1.4 tip) MasterPro HVLP spray gun (base coat with 1.3 tip and clear coat with 1.4 tip) I have a LOT of work to do before I can actually reassemble the car, but I had to at least loose fit a few panels together so I could see more of the color at once... I love it!! I didn't have enough room to paint the body kit so I'm in the process of prepping for that now. It worked out nicely to spray it separately, as I have a couple little areas that need to be touched up so I'll spray those along with the kit. I have plenty of leftover base and clear coat, so it should all match nicely. Believe me I'm super excited to see the car all together and sitting on the ground, but I have a lot to do before I can start reassembly and at this point I'm not going to rush it! At least now the majority of the big paint work is done which is a HUGE breath of relief. I'm very motivated to keep on working, but this week is my anniversary and my focus is on my wife, without whom I'd never had got this project to where it is now!! I'll keep updates coming and now that the images are on Imgur the links should be good forever!

Well the forecast has been off and on here in northern VT (or as Dre617 said, basically Canada) so upon seeing a nice 80 degree day on Thursday, I decided to take off Wed/Thurs last week and bust ass to get the car painted. AND I DID IT!! I used wood I had left over from various projects to build all sorts of things for my DIY spray booth. I built stands for 4' LED ballasts, I built stands to hold my bumper covers higher off the ground, I built a stand to hold the trunk, I built a thing to attach all the small pieces to... lots of stuff! I used some old keyboard stands atop some wood stands to hold the bumpers. This worked great! I hung the doors from the ceiling via a 2x4 strapped to the joists and some chian. I ended up adding some bungee cord and some leftover deck balusters jammed into the speaker cavities to push the bottom sides out from one another, this worked great. My wife snapped this pic on Tuesday night as I had just about finished getting everything into position Masking up the car took a while. Here's the stand I built for small parts. Just a bunch of wood stakes screwed to some plywood. I ziptied the small parts to these stakes. It looked like a torture chamber device lol My amazing wife helping me tack and degrease all my parts. She also played a crucial role in masking the place, and telling me to get my butt back out into the shop whenever I tried to slack! To ensure airflow through the "booth" I set up a couple regular box fans in the back door of the shop (the door opposite of the overhead doors) and as you can see in the last pic, had some high CFM fans below the overhead doors blowing air out. I attached some 20" HVAC filters to the front of these fans to catch any bugs/debris, which actually worked out REALLY well. The booth didn't move as much air as I'd have liked (you'll see in subsequent photos) but overall it did quite well. Next post will be the spray photos

You're not wrong Thanks! --- I've been working long days this week and haven't got much shop time but in the time I have found I've just been cleaning up my space in preparation of spraying on the next warm day we get. It was 45 yesterday morning

I live in Georgia VT which is about 20-25 mins north of Burlington