Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Rust work continues on the Mercedes


Hello, everyone who’s reading. I’m going to try and be better about updating this more regularly. As of now, I’m nearly done with the passenger side of the car.

All the patch panels are welded and seam sealed, which includes some new patches in the trunk/rear quarter area. Despite the flux core welder, I was able to do some pretty clean (by my standards, not global standards – I’m well aware that a professional body man would laugh at my work) repair work on the exterior panels. The interior stuff , with overlap and less room to use my grinder, has yielded sloppier-looking work. But, since the interior repairs will be hidden by carpets and trim panels, it makes little to no difference to me.




I’ve also started applying bedliner to the repaired areas. That stuff is sticky and nasty. Can’t wait to see what it’s like when dry and fully cured.



Over the weekend, I also received an interesting email. Around a year and a half ago, I bought some parts from a guy who lives across town from me. Well, he emailed me this weekend saying that he’s moving out of the area soon, and that since I was the only person to ever actually show up and give him money for parts, that he’d like to give me the remainder of his 240D parts stash so that he wouldn’t have to dumpster it.

Well, on Monday evening after work, I woke the Vanagon up from its winter hibernation and headed over there. I got a decent passenger seat (red), a usable rear seat (also red), door panels (you guessed it – red), headlights, side trim, side glass, a radio, a muffler, and probably more than I’m forgetting.

The guy in question is a really nice guy and a student, so I told him that I’d feel bad taking this stuff, as it was likely I’d resell a good portion of it. It was a nice offer, but I didn’t want to pick anyone’s pocket. As such, I gave him some money for the parts. I still got a very good deal.



The next time I’m out there, I’ll probably start on repairing the passenger side hood spring perch.

4 comments:

  1. It's cool to see the progress you've been making on this man. I love checking this blog and seeing new posts. Keep up the good work!

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    1. Looks like I missed your comment. Thanks. I've been trying to speed up my progress recently.

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  2. almost seems like the red leather interior would be perfect in the car once it's done IMO

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  3. I thought about it... for a few seconds. Unfortunately, I'm one seat short of a set, and the red stuff is in overall much more poor condition. I'm going to use the bamboo '79 interior I rebuilt over the winter.

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