Update by Tim Suddard to the
Mercedes-Benz 230 S project car
Feb 27, 2013
We're getting ready for the Pinehurst Concours.
We thought we were only dealing with a small area of rust in the left rear quarter. We were wrong.
We managed to get looking pretty good. The thick steel of the Mercedes is much easier to weld than some of the other cars we mess with.
Our inner quarter panels trunk area is now patched, primed, seam sealed and sprayed with a little OE-style undercoating.
Originally, we thought our rear quarter panel was very minor, and we didn’t try to order any repair panels. Seemingly, the damage was mostly on the inside of the quarter and fabricating flat panels is relatively straight forward, using what little good metal we could find on our Mercedes parts car. It may seem a little unorthodox and a bit more time consuming, but if you use sheet metal off a parts car it is essentially free and and an excact match to the original sheet metal.
As it turns out (and it typically does) we had more damage on the outer quarter than we thought. Rather than cut the whole lower quarter panel out and wait for a repair panel to get here, we forged ahead, making smaller repairs out of repair pieces we designed ourselves.
While an entire panel, might have been preferred, we did the repairs right and they will last forever and will look fine. This method just takes a bit more time than welding in the entire lower rear quarter panel. We then painted the entire area with POR-15 rust preventive paint, seam sealed and then used Eastwood Rust Preventative inside the lower rear quarter panel area to make sure the rust didn’t come back.
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Wow! Just came across your project. We're doing a similar build – we had a bit bigger budget 'cause we didn't want to start with a rusty car and don't have the same skills/resources at repair as you folks. We have a running car now , fiddling with the Zeniths still an issue. Our site has a recent update – http://mint2me.com. Look forward to more!
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