Right, I finally got the war paint applied to the side of the Subaru XV 2.0i-S long-termer. Well, I got a little bit of it done. I’ll be interested to see how the Armor All Custom Shield Coating goes. Welcome to Week 9.

Run by: Isaac Bober
Travel: 3000km
Fuel consumption: 7.0L/100km (7.0L/100km official)
List price: $36,990 (+ORC)
Service Costs: Nil
Week ending: 19 September.

Read our full review of the Subaru XV

RIGHT, I FINALLY DID IT. I finally got some of this flippin’ Armor All Custom Shield Coating onto the side of the Subaru XV. And when I say the side, as you can see in the pics, I really mean just one door panel.

Time really does fly and the weather’s been absolute rubbish for the past few weeks. But, with the sun finally shining I decided to get out and paint the side of XV. Why? Well, a few weeks ago when I took it rough roading I noticed, once I got home, that the bottom of the doors had copped a lot of mud spray.

Given that I plan to do a lot more dirt driving with the XV, and we’ve got a father and son school holiday trout fishing trip coming up, so, I wanted to see what this spray-on alternative to vinyl wrap would be like. I’d watched the Armor All video of Russell Ingall applying it to a Commodore and then driving to a V8 Supercar round to see how it went in keeping bugs and stone chips from damaging the paint and it seemed to work okay. Would the magic of a YouTube clip translate to yours truly?

I was in a hurry and that’s never a good start to a DIY project and so everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I dropped and broke a bottle of car wash and so lost precious time driving to the shop to buy a new bottle of the stuff. Bugger. But, once back home I managed to wash and chamois the car without drama. I then let the car air dry a little more in the sun while I gathered up some newspaper and painter’s tape… don’t use ordinary packing tape on the side of your car because it’s not designed for the job. Painter’s tape won’t damage the paint underneath and won’t let the paint bleed through.

Okay, with my tape and newspaper I set about masking off the area I wanted to paint. I’d originally planned to paint the bottom of both the front and rear doors, but I settled on the rear door to start with. As you can see from the pics, I performed the world’s worst masking job but there was no overspray. I had some bug and tar remover on hand just in case.

I applied three coats, removing the tape and newspaper as soon as I finished applying the final coat as this supposedly allows for the neatest edge. Hmm. I’m going to need a little more practice as the edge on my job looks like it’s been nibbled by a mouse.

I’ll get the rest of the Custom Shield Coating applied over the weekend and spend a week driving around to see how it goes.