Here is just a photo of me and Mårten Borgny, my "Ponton advisor" in Kisa. The car is laying on its left side, giving me a better position to clean it from dirt, oil, rust and whatever you may find under a car.
Me in April, the car is being welded.
The welding wizard, Mikael. Hanging on the wall you can see the rear mudguards as well as the trunk lid to the left, behind Mikael.
When I took the car apart I wrote down every part that was going to be replaced. I actually enter everything in an Access database so I can search and produce reports of parts that I need to order before starting the next phase in the restoration process. Every time I buy something, I update the database with date, price and dealer. The downside of this is that I'm awfully aware of what this project costs me!
This list I have dealt with over the last five to ten years, especially the last five years. The majority of this list consists of rubber parts. However, you don't want to put old, hard rubber in the car when assembling it. So the first step is to really check the items you receive, even if it's (of course) original parts, they can have been stored for decades. This problem is also applicable to parts bought from Mercedes! The second thing is to store them correctly. Actually, I don't know the ideal condition, but some parts stored on my parents attic (temperature between -30C to +50C) proved that isn't a good idea... So, I would recommend you to store it dry in normal room temperature.
Anyway, storing rubber for longer periods isn't good, either if it's your dealer who does it or you. I therefore highly recommend you to soak every part (I've done it twice a year) with liquid paraffin. Let them dry up for half an hour or so and then wipe with some cloth. The best result is achieved if you mix the paraffin with some alcohol (sorry, I don't remember the shares). And then put them back in their carefully labeled bags and boxes. It's fun to know where you can find your parts later when they're needed.
The rubber is kept like new, at least for 10 years according to my experience!
I try to re-use as many screws, nuts and bolts as possible. That means of course that I have to clean, grind and sand blast everything. It takes a lot of time but on the other hand most of the bolts and screws are original with their original labels (Kamax, Graeka, Verbus, Ribe etc). Those can be quite hard and expensive to find at least to my knowledge.
Most of the parts in the car is of ordinary steel, that is it's prone to rust. To prevent rust you either cover the metal surface with anti corrosive oils, plating etc. You can of course use screws etc in stainless steel but then you'll risk to get galvanic corrosion (have e.g. a look at http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Aircraft/galv-exam1.htm).
When my parts are cleaned I therefore hand them over to Skeppstedt & Pihl in Stockholm for plating; black, white or yellow cadmium. Even though the colors differ the protection is the same. Some say that all plated parts were in white cadmium and that the yellow finish came first after 1958 or 1959. I've however found yellow plated, original screws also in my car which is from 1957. True or not, I use the finish that I find looks best for its application - normally yellow. And since a lot of the new screws etc that I order from my suppliers are in yellow I try to stick to that color. Otherwise I would have to re-finish new screws...
There are some things to take into consideration when doing this. I'll write about this later! Remind me if you seen this sentence too long ;-)!!
 |
 |
 |
 |
Maybe a strange discussion. But I take it here so you know what I've been doing and thinking. If I order a semi gloss paint from my painter he mixes the basis with 20% matting additive. In my opinion it is a little bit too glossy. See for example my trunk painted with such a DB7164 under the Restoration-Chassis section, it's more glossy than I think it should be (remember that the photos have given the paint even more "shine". Instead I found that 55% of matting additive gives a good match. This is what I've used for black paint on the engine and on the aggregates in the engine compartment (heater boxes etc). Of course the lustre also depends on the underlying surface, primer and 100 other things I don't know about since I'm not a professional painter, but most of the time I'm very satisfied.