Miss Sue.. Plus some questions. UPDATED

[maria24017]

Really nothing special whatsoever but I love her anyways..

I wish I would have gotten pictures of her before, there was a lot of failed clear coat on the trunk and roof. But also a large circle of it around the spots on the hood. I've never seen another subaru with failing clear coat though. There were a total of 5 surface rust spots on the hood, one on the corner of the front drivers fender plus a patch in the rear drivers door where there was no paint or primer. All the spots were sanded down and sprayed with self etching primer. The whole car will probably be shot with grey primer before being painted. I also removed the badges and sanded behind them.











Questions... Is it just me or does the car look like it sits low in the back?? It had some junk in the trunk but not _that_ much
And the "chrome" plastic trim on the rear bumper, is that something that anyone has tried replacing? The stuff on the rear is really screwed up and ugly.
Also, the black trim around the doors. Some of it is missing paint, it is down to the metal. It has been like that since before I got the car. What is the best way to paint the bare spots? There isn't any rust there. I did notice that the paint is a lot more like a plastic film, it is even wrinkled in some places

My hopes are to get the car painted soon an put new wheel covers on it

[Legacy777]

You can check to see if the car is sitting lower in the rear. These cars typically "look" like they are sagging, but actually are not. Subaru did a poor job in designing "rake" into the first gen Legacy. If you look a newer mercedes, it has quite a bit of rake. The front lines of the car are smaller and get larger to the rear. It gives the appearance of the car being lower in the front.

http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... s_1990.jpg

You can replace the chrome trim on the bumper. It's just held on with adhesive. You just buy a new piece and stick it on there.

The window trim is a pain. The underlying metal is stainless, so the paint flakes off pretty easy. Touch up won't really look great unless you do the entire thing. There's a post where one of the members took the trim off, sanded it down, primed it, painted it black, and then clear coated it.

I'd also suggest painting the front grill. They look better painted IMO.

Also, you can clean up the headlights. Here's how I did it. There are cleaners that are probably less work, but they never lasted that long.

http://www.bbs.legacycentral.org/viewto ... f=10&t=739

[maria24017]

Thanks for he info about the car sitting low, I'll have to look into that.

I had seen the trim on ebay when looking for some door trim for our outback. Any idea what size it is? If not I can always just measure it.

I could tell the trim would be a pain.. But it isn't that big of a deal right now. We might look into fixing it when we paint the car though. My uncle is an industrial painter and has all the stuff we need to paint the body and my father did auto body and paint in school, he was even offered a place in some national competition.

I bought acrylic enamel from TCP global. Afterwards I was told that it isn't a very good choice, but I'm not looking to get a show car.. Just something that looks better than what I currently have. When we first got the car we did shoot a little spray paint on the grill but I am planning to take it off and do a better job on it.

Doing the headlights is a good idea as well.

[Legacy777]

You can buy the proper length & size silver trim from Subaru. You can find the part # for it in the parts book on my server.

http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... og_-_FULL/

Not sure of the exact size. You can measure it and see what you can find as generic trim.

[maria24017]

We finally painted the car last night. The color wasn't really what I wanted, it was supposed to be brown/gold. The paint on the lid looked silver/gold, which I really liked... But it turned out more of a mustard/gold.. We may end up changing it later on at some point, but over all it looks a lot better than it did.

When we had all the trim taped off with blue painters tape it actually looked pretty cool. We almost considered painting all the trim blue
As you notice the wheel covers have been replaced since the previous pictures on this thread, and I also added a spoiler.

[SILINC3R]

Wow, I'm impressed. Looks like a totally different car, looks really good.

[Legacy777]

Yeah....definitely looks like a totally different car!

[maria24017]

Thanks.. I'm glad that it doesn't look like a piece of junk anymore.
I like it a lot better now.