thinking of just buying the polished bar and installed it myself.Anyway, we have the publication from our dearest BW - PEID. Thank you. Any idea on the pricing or the Part number of the Polished Bar.
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Quote 4 da` day : MODDING is very essential to make your ML very SPECIAL
When l checked about a month ago..it was $600.00 Canadian....plus labour....[:0]
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1999 : Black Opal ML 430 : 125,000 KM (traded-in)
2002 : Bordeaux AMG ML 55 : 130,000 KM (traded-in)
2006 : Silver lridium ML 350 : 53,000 KM (stolen)
2006 : Cubanite Silver ML 350 : 24,000 KM
They are still expensive - almost $200 per side, and you’d have to make sure you were getting the correct bright aluminum rails from the 2005 SE and not the standard black painted rails from previous years. DIY with Peid’s instructions will cost you less than $20 in stripper and a metal polishing kit. Of course the project will take a few hours, so an appropriate beer budget should be added to that as well.
If the polishing is scaring anyone, you could just strip the paint and leave them with the brushed finish which would look just like the factory finish on the SE. Even if your bars have some tough paint like mine did, you can use steel wool to gently brush it away, then follow with progressively finer sandpaper (200-400-600 grit) to restore the brushed finish. Don’t let my broken bolts scare you, either. I probably could have avoided that had I used a few small drops of WD-40 or other lubricant and then run the bolts in and out to break up the lock-tite. I just strong-armed mine with my pneumatic socket wrench when I should have been a bit more careful.
For those that do want to tackle this, I do have one more word of advice – when you remove your parts, make sure you keep the parts separated as for front and rear and left and right. Everything is a mirror image, including the bars themselves, and the front and rear brackets look very similar. The good news is that the center support is keyed, so you don’t have worry about which direction it goes as long as you get the correct bar for that side. I took mine off with the truck backed into the garage and though I was being very careful to place the parts on my workbench, then I replaced them with the truck pulled in forward. Also, I got the right and left bars mixed up, so I spent an extra ten minutes straightening out that error.
By the way, if anyone wants to make a trip to Birmingham, I'd be glad to help!
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