OK guys, go easy on me. I'm working a) by myself, b) at home in my spare time, and c) with a budget constrained to about $150/month for materials. First pictures will be of the car as I bought it. Then I'll show the rust -- yes, I knew 90% of this when I bought it. Then a couple of pics of work in progress (as long as you are nice).
Spare tire well rusted through.
Gas tank rusted through. The lighter rust is actually just dried fluid from the tank, that will clean up. What rusted was the vertical metal below the softtop storage area.
This is the driver's side rear tire well taken from the inside of the trunk. It was rusted along the seam. I cut out a section before patching it with fresh metal.
Same hole just taken from inside the wheel well. I'm just starting to clean it up. Whatever undercoating MB used was THICK.
Another disclaimer: This isn't going to be a show car and these will not be show-car repairs. I don't have those skills. These are going to be "it won't rust again as long as I'm alive" repairs being done so I have a toy to drive around town locally.
You say you don't have those skills. You will have. It's amazing how fast you Will pick up the techniques... I hope it comes out good. I do like the idea that you have sliced and diced a cop car to fill in the bad bits. There is a perverse kind of justice in that somehow.
Ok, here is where it got ugly. Sorry I didn't get a 'before picture'. The hinges for the soft top cover and trunk had rusted badly enough to eat through the body sheet metal. This pic is after I have cut away the worst of it on the driver's side. The sandwich bags are for me to bag parts as they come off the vehicle.
This is after a) grinding, b) sanding (50 grit on a grinder), c) treating everything within 20" with rust reformer, and d) after POR-15.
Yes, it will rust again, but not while I'm still on the correct side of the lawn.
My previous project was putting the motor and front end from a 2007 Crown Vic police car into my son's 1977 F-100. Since I had a leftover Crown Vic, I cut off all the flat sheet metal before I hauled it off. So whenever you see white paint, it is a skin graft from a Crown Vic.
I have tried and failed to do good butt welds. Don't have the equipment and don't have the skills. With a cheap wire-core welder, I burn a hole through the sheet metal every 3rd weld. So what I did was buy a Northern Tool bead roller for $100. After I cut a section the patch is made over-size and I roll a bead on the edge to depress the edges. That way when I put the patch in from the underside it is very near flush with the existing body metal. The holes are drilled to make a 'spot' weld to the metal underneath. Grind it smooth and body filler hides the remaining sins.
No, it is not all bondo. I didn't take pictures of doing the sheet metal for the remaining sections down to the trunk weatherseal edge. It is all fresh metal with a skin of filler on it. The filler on the vertical metal in the soft top area it just me sticking leftover filler into some low spots that I'll clean up later.
The astute reader might spot that there at 5 (count 'em, 5!) existing coats of paint/primer on this vehicle.
OK guys, go easy on me. I'm working a) by myself, b) at home in my spare time, and c) with a budget constrained to about $150/month for materials. First pictures will be of the car as I bought it. Then I'll show the rust -- yes, I knew 90% of this when I bought it. Then a couple of pics of work in progress (as long as you are nice).
Seriously, welcome to BW107. Looks like you're well on your way to resurrecting the ol' girl. As to pics, you can attach up to 10 in a post, but only 5 at a time, so click manage attachments again, bingo.
You, sir, have one hell of a lot more patience than I do! And those are skills I don't have. If I were to attempt that work, I'd leave a screwed-up mess.
I'm a lot more money limited than anything else. For example, I need to put head gaskets on the motor. That blows my fun budget for about 1.5 months.
I'm figuring at my rate, it'll take 24 months to be done. If I spent money quicker, it'd be about a year working weekends. My wife is pretty tolerant of my hobby, so I'm not going to press my good fortune more than I have to.
Skill levels aside, that's a pretty rough looking hobby you've elected to take on, especially with the budget limitations you're facing.
Congratulations on your "new" hobby and welcome to the forums. You've joined a group of enthusiastic owners that will be happy to share all their wisdom and experience with you.
Good luck, keep the pics coming as things progress, and hold on to your determination...it may come in handy! :smile
As I've said, this car is for me. My welds aren't pretty but they are pretty stout.
I think this is the toolbox compartment in the trunk.
Cut out the worst of it.
Built a pan out of 16 gauge steel (original was 18g). Welded in on four side and underneath.
Used filler underneath so there was no path for moisture to get in and POR-15'd the thing. It isn't too pretty but it is stout. And yes, I did treat the remaining surface rust with phosporic acid rust converter before I painted it.
Will it rust again? Yes, my belief is that anything that's had even surface rust will eventually rust out again. But if you treat it and keep moisture off of it (POR-15) it'll rust out on my grandkids, not me.
Yikes! That's pretty bad. Have to think about how to salvage that... and no, I don't want to buy a new trunk lid (but I'm willing to change my mind in the future...)
Ahhh, the evil that lurks within.
Might have to let this one sit a little while I think about it.
Left side of the trunk compartment was trashed too. Remove the top steel and the structural member underneath is 3x worse.
Handy metal brake and more 16g steel
Original part on the left. "Reproduction" on the right.
Yes, I knew this car was rusted this badly. What was important to me was that the structural parts (except for this one) weren't rusted (e.g. rocker panels, A pillars). Sort out the trunk, gas tank, and floor pans and the remainder wasn't really too bad.
Wow! I really admire you taking this on. I've spent the last 18 months patching together a '76 450SL that spent 15 years parked outside in New England.
I thought it was bad, and there have been several times along the way when I wondered if I was entirely sane, and should have headed to a dry South Western state to find my 'project'. But, yours is a bigger challenge by an order of magnitude - but you're clearly making great progress. Believe me, it will be worth it when it's done (I'm a few weeks from paint, and just standing back and looking at all that completed work makes me feel good already!
I've restored a few cars before, and had many older cars, but the 450SL is my first Mercedes. Looking at your car (and mine), I am amazed at how solid they can look on the outside while hidden problems lurk under the skin. I've never known any other car like it...
Looking at the number of views vs. the number of comments it is pretty clear that these kinds of repairs do not appeal to a lot of folks here. Yes, if all the repairs were made with clean original Mercedes parts the cost to repair would be much higher than the value of the car. That's why I'm not buying a lot of new parts.
Not casting stones, but someone a while back posted a car asking 'what do you guys think?' My first thought was 'Wow! At that price with that little rust, jump on it!'. The next comment posted was 'With that much rust that is at best a parts car'. I thought geez, if you want to part out that car, you might as well just drive a 2017. Why on earth you'd ultimately consign that 450sl to the shredder is beyond me.
Again not calling anybody out, but to me the fun of this hobby is taking an old classic and giving it the attention it should have gotten and getting it back on the road. Some people rescue cats and dogs; I walk through a salvage yard and I want to take 1/3 of the cars back home with me. I'm sort of a 'car rescue' guy.
OK Photobucket, nice trick. $399? No thanks. I thought the whole purpose of photobucket was to enable 3rd party hosting.
Yes, I know you are supposed to be able to drag and drop pictures using the site directly. For some reason I've had issues. Sorry for the posts with blocked pictures.
Yeah Dig, that was allowed after Dropbox crapped on everyone...
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