Mercedes Benz 190SL

The left front wing looked perfect with paint. Sight down indicated no damage, but on close examination and by feeling the panel above the eyebrow under the arch indicated that there may be filler under the paint as the panel was too thick This was confirmed once the paint was stripped under which was layer upon layer of filler.

 

 

 

Sight down the bare metal wing with a wipe down of panel wipe clearly showed previous accident damage to the middle of the panel. What should been a concave curvature from back to front was in fact a convex pane, where the panel at the eyebrow edge had gone in 2 centimetres. The only remedy was to use a mini hydraulic ram inside the wheel arch to push the outer edge back to shape. Heat shrinking and panel beating the stretched panel was followed with lead loading.

 

 

 

A hole to the front of the eyebrow was previously repaired by mig welding. This rather poor repair was cut out with a new panel fabricated and butt-welded. The panel was sanded with a mini air sander mounted with a 3M 2" Roloc Bristle disc. This is great for removing rust, paint and filler with-out gorging the underlying sheet metal. Any ripples in the panel after panel beating were smoothed out by lead loading.

 

 

 

The panel was lead loaded to smooth out minor ripples and hammer marks left after panel beating. The final work to complete to metal work stage to align with door can be seen in the entry under 'Door Gaps'.

Posted by webmaster at 10:22 PM | Permalink

Condition of the right wing before stripping was as confirmed after stripping and in exceptional condition. Despite the condition I could not understand why so much filler was used on this wing. Filler was applied as filler costs $20 gallon and primer costs $200 per gallon. The filler was stripped layer by layer with paint stripper to bare metal. The lower portion of the wing need minor panel beating to perfect, which would have been a better option. The upper portion had a few dents where presumably one would lean on the wing to make repairs in the engine bay. These were panel beated and any ripples finished off with lead.

 

 

 

It was surprising that so much filler was needed as the panel after stripping was perfectly straight. It appears that this body shop was treating the panel like a Boyd Coddington restoration, fill the whole car with filler, but did not sand off most of the filler.

 

 

 

The head lamp bucket was removed to de-rust the top of the bucket and to reach high up in the wing. This being a common rust area I wanted to be double sure that all signs of rust were removed. The top of the wing slopped down at the front, indicating that the wing was in good shape. With the headlamp bucket welded the area around the indicator light and head lamp was leaded and the chrome bezel trial fitted. Always best to trial fit a metal and primer stage as once painted and adjustment will need to be lived with.

 

 

 

You will loose count as to the number of time you will need to pre-fit chrome parts. It becomes rather monotonous as you fit and remove. I must add that I am not striving for perfection as a concours 190Sl but rather as Bruce Adam's of the 190SL Group International once said ' Do it one but do it right' was the motto I have adopted.

Posted by webmaster at 08:56 PM | Permalink

Whilst the body was upright on its side I had easy access to the lower portion of the rear wing forward of the stone guard. It appeared that the 190SL had been jacked up at this point causing damage to the lower lip and filler panel joining this lip on rear wing / quarter panel to frame. Rather than panel beating or fabricating a repair panel this was filled with bondo / filler. Looked perfect with paint but a magnet indicated filler and drew my attention to stripping down to bare metal.

The damaged body panel and frame filler panel were cut out. This provided access to the inner portion of the rear wing, which was remarkably rust free. This was acid washed, rinsed and sealed with epoxy primer.
The remaining lip and panel was panel beated to ensure that the curvature followed the contour of the body. It was important to get this part correct as the rocker sill chrome, door and stone guard will show any bad contours. A cardboard template was transferred onto a flat piece of sheet metal. The curvature was made with a hammer and dolly and the lip of the covering panel fabricated on the edge of the work bench. Both panels fabricated were welded in after an initial trial fit. This area was finished with lead solder.

The rear panel after metal work and lead loading produced a nice base for paint. The chrome eyebrow moulding holes were checked for correst location and contour with the body. The chrome moldings need work on the edges to perfect a fit as the contours did not follow that of the eyebrow sheet metal. Possibly the reason for this was that I was trying to fit new replacement parts to original factory rear panels. The tooling over the years may have worn or these have been re-manufactured to fit the new factory panels. In fact a few 190SL's viewed with new panels and chrome moldings showed that these did not exactly fit like a glove. Another reason to pre-fit every part to the body before final paint. I like to pre-fit when body is in metal and after the primer stages before top coats are applied. Time consuming, but you can appreciate why a professional restoration shop's labour hours can accelerate quickly.
As a matter of course all chrome work was trial fitted to the body during metal work as well as during the primer stage to ensure correct fit. Any cutting or adding of metal to perfect a fit can be done at this stage.

Posted by webmaster at 12:06 AM | Permalink