Vehicle: 1986 190E 2.3-16, 1992 190E 2.3 and 2007 GL450
Location: new york city
Posts: 790
2.3-16 Trunk Alignment
The trunk lines are chaos. The hinge points and spacer posts do not appear to properly align the trunk lines.
The idea is to have continuous lines that run along the body properly converge at the rear area. There can be no excess gaps or "lower" or "higher" areas of body metal. The trunk lid to quarter panel gaps vary visibly and will be corrected. The badge area of the trunk lid has edges that do not run along continuous lines from the rear glass to the tail lights. That has to be fixed.
So the day was spent loosening and tightening bolts and adjusting spacers, and computing how much if any metal to add to or take away from the trunk. A grinder flattened out a little elevation along the port rear of the trunk lid.
Tomorrow will tell what the final adjustments are.
Vehicle: 1986 190E 2.3-16, 1992 190E 2.3 and 2007 GL450
Location: new york city
Posts: 790
2.3-16 Trunk and Roof
The top photo shows the last glitch in the trunk area: a manufacturing defect that involves the lip of the trunk lid extending incorrectly beyond the lines of the rear quarter panel on the port side. The bottom corner appears to bend back beyond the lines and the distance to the quarter panel is too short.
The rest of the trunk lid is complete with a minimum of putty and primer. In fact, on the port side of the vehicle, its hood and roof and trunk lid, the body team reduced the factory finish to the original brown primer with a minimum of putty or new primer. The majority of the original primer is intact and will serve as the base for the Hecker refinish. The starboard side used a little more putty and primer yielding a little less original primer. There is absolutely zero bondo-type body filler. The green material is being used to fill in grinder and vandal scratches as well as smoothing out primer and body metal for the 199.
Hence, the final finish will rest on original sheetmetal and most of the original factory primer. Also, this entire job conclusively proves the 8,000 mile 16v was never hit in any manner and sports original sheetmetal pressed at the factory and left untouched until vandals scratched it up and dented it a little. The vandalism will be completely cured when the glassman will replace the front and rear windscreens. The side wind screens are intact.
Three of the team members are in the bottom photo. The glass man is on the far left. The spoiler and plastic refinisher is to the right of the glass man. The body metal man is cutting putty with an air sander.
Vehicle: 1986 190E 2.3-16, 1992 190E 2.3 and 2007 GL450
Location: new york city
Posts: 790
2.3-16 Horizontal Surfaces
This sequence is a show and tell of excess putty and filler needed on the horizontal surfaces to repair vandalism.
The hood appears to be very much short of being a "bondo beauty". That is to say that although to flatten the hood surface took more than a sliver of material toward the front of the hood and a complete strip to metal toward the rear, the hood is flat and sturdy and ready for primer.
Please critique! The question is whether it is better to save the original factory hood with stuff on the metal or replace it with a new hood.
The roof took extra material toward the front and toward the rear. The sliver is rather thin. The bodymetal man suction popped out all recessed sheetmetal and worked the putty and primer mix to yield a flat surface.
The tactic on the trunk lid was to line up the horizontal surface flush with the rear windscreen line and raise the wings of the trunk lid with material so as to slightly lift the edges to line up with the tops of the rear quarter panels.
On the to-do list: glass and rear license plate panel, prime and shoot.
Whew.
Last edited by lomtevas : 05-10-2008 at 11:23 AM.
Reason: typos
Linear Mode
