(NEW UPDATES)1963 Mercedes 230 SL W113 Tidy Up (NEW UPDATES)
Hello every one, One of my good friends Jonas recently purchased this little gem to add to his collection.
This car had won numerous Concours events during the 1980`s but had not been shown since and was used on sunny days by its previous owner and although it has been very well looked after the car was in need of a little bit of love to bring it back to its former glory.
So my intension's are to go round the car to identify any issues and correct those and when these are taken care of we will finish it of with a full detail.
Here is the car
Had to have a few days of the 230SL, to re polish his other car, this 280SL has just been returned from Sotherbys Paris Auction where it did not reach its reserve, and is now booked to go to the historics auction at Brooklands, in May.
It was clear that the car had been mauled by the masses and had received quit a few battle scars from the public, plus dry wiping by the valeting staff.
I hope this is the last time I have to re polish the car for its potential new owner. upload picture how to print screen on pc screen capture windows 7
Thanks, Henry, I follow many threads on this site to give me inspiration but I appreciate and value your comments if I have inspired anyone to have a go at works that they would not normally do, then taking the time to write my threads have been worth it.
Wow what a great job this has really inspired me! Great work but having read every page up to around 36 I was gutted that from then on it wasn't showing pics so never got to see the final result!!!
thank you, there is lots more work to go on this page as the project is still on going, It had a 2 year break whilst I have been building my Detailing business but I have taken all the pictures as the job has progressed so I need to find time to load them on this thread, as it happens I have made some time to get back onto the car next week.
Ted was my first inspiration on DW. It's great to see others who's threads I've followed avidly, commenting on his posts. I love seeing the genius, the craftsmanship and the sheer sweat you all bring. :detailer:
Well, this update has been a long time coming, it is roughly a year since I moved the 230 SL from my home to my unit, the intention was to work on the car during the times that I did not have any detailing to do, as you may remember this little tidy up had grown into a much bigger project, having to have floor panels, inner cills, rear floors, chassis leg and much more, the paint work was micro blistering and the top cote of paint had been polished through in places, the o/s inner flitch had been covered in brake fluid from a leaking master cylinder seal so this panel has been stripped and primered.
I am going to try,to give the details of work from each part of the work, if I miss any thing that anyone has questions for please do not hesitate to ask.
Some of you have been following this work on my facebook page, so I will apologize in advance for the repartition, at least I can go into more detail on here.
I am now going to my files to get some sort of order to start off on, I will be back soon.
You may remember that a lot of panel making and welding was one of the last jobs that was covered whilst I was doing the work from home, so once the car had been moved to the unit the first job would be to tidy this back up and try and make the repairs invisible, you are going to see a lot of use of body filler, this is to make the repairs appear to be seamless and i must stress that the body filler has not been used to hide any rusty holes, but is used to improve the appearance of the parts that have been hammered into position during the repair process and have been covered with dents and grinding marks and although some of the pictures look like there is excess amounts of filler being used, I can assure you that by the time these are flatted down there is minimal amounts left on the panels.
So the first jobs where to grind out the surface rust that had accumulated during the time it had sat on my drive, also this was the opportunity to grind the welds down to get the panel match as close as possible, sounds like a quick job but, it was not.
Once the grinding was complete and any pinholes had been mig welded and re ground, it was time to start matching the welded panels together and filling all the dents, you know how I like every thing to flow seamlessly and was aiming at a completely oem look or better in some cases.
With the floor now complete, it was time to go back under the front wheel arches to complete what I had started some years ago, no fancy tools needed under here, just a couple of scrappers, a heat gun and grinder, my only problem was that I was going to be working in the hight of the summer months, you may remember, it was a scorcher.
Once the underside of the wings where ready for stonechip, it was time to start stripping the bonnet, this panel had patches of micro blistering and needed to be taken back to metal, here is the video of this process, little did I know what was in store for me to get this bonnet level.
After finishing the last video, the bonnet was inspected inch by inch, I did intend to feather the outer edge of the bonnet but the inspection indicated that there where some micro blisters starting to appear, also there where far more repairs required than I first thought, after trying to treat each ripple and dent as individual repairs it soon became apparent that it would be near impossible to repair the bonnet this way and with it being not so thick aluminum it would easily stretch if we tried to planish some of the dents out, so the only option would be to skim out the whole bonnet, this does not mean that it would be full of clag but a couple of thin skims would mean it could be flat bed sanded to level the dented and rippled panel, we would do this in three sections with the normal body filler, but would treat it as a whole once we got down to applying the polyester finishing filler.
Where the edges of the alluminium bonnet was crimped to the steel frame at the factory, it had left ripples all around the bonnet edges, these where filled at the factory before primer was added but the filler being fifty years old had been absorbing moisture and this was encouraging the micro blistering, so every patch of filler was removed before we added any ourselves.
Here are some pictures that show some of the process, it may look a bit extreme to those that do not frequent body shops but some times when you are looking for extremely flat finishes, this is what has to be done, this means that we dictate the quality of the finish and not the dented panel.
once, all the filling and fettling to get the bonnet straight and level was finished After nearly 40 hours work, epoxy primer was applied, once cured, a black guide cote was added, the bonnet was then blocked down using 320 grit, dry, it is now ready to re prime with 2 pack primer.
With the bonnet now nearly ready for paint it was time to start the boot lid, this was stripped using paint stripper, just as the bonnet was done, please watch this video for a description of what was found.
I have thrown in the collection one of my recent Details, this car had been badly re painted and came to me for wet flatting and multi stage polishing, this gave the car a very needed lift back to something that looked beautifull.
Isn't it amazing that the design of the boot lid, and the strength of the hinge springs would cause that degree of distortion over the years. It's in great hands, that's for sure.
Isn't it amazing that the design of the boot lid, and the strength of the hinge springs would cause that degree of distortion over the years. It's in great hands, that's for sure.
To see more of the work I have been doing, please search ted whitehall in youtube
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