When my father filled the car with Tectyl he did so also with the doors. Unfortunately, he forgot that there are small draining holes close to the door "skin". For me that meant that all doors had to be repaired in the bottom. One of the front doors also had a very strange rust attack, in the seam on the middle of the door, under the door sealing. This one was therefore replaced with a "new" one from a 190. This meant that I had to drill holes for the ornamental bars under the side window.
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Here's how all doors were prepared by me before the final paint. I wanted to restore and paint all areas that is not going to be visible by myself in order to save money. The visible areas I hand over to a professional painter.
First picture shows you the welded door, still with hinges and door brakes still in place. When trying to get doors etc back on the chassis with the perfect Mercedes fit you don't want to have too many variables to adjust. Removing the doors/hinges from the chassis is one thing, but also removing them from the door is something that I've been strongly advised not to do. I could understand that - and I still do. Don't do it if not absolutely necessary.
Most of the hinges hadn't been removed from the doors. Some had been removed by the welder during his work but then re-installed before he put everything together on the chassis to check that everything fitted. So I knew that their positions on the doors would be good - at least something to start with. Hence, I wanted to get them back in that position. So before I removed them from the doors I drilled two 3mm holes in each, each hole as far away from the other as possible and in diametrical position (second picture). These hole will be filled and sanded before the final paint. The third picture only shows you the threade plate on the backside. This one is the lower one so you don't see the door stop which I'll cover later.
The hinges were then cleaned. See the red markings on each hinge, if they were put there after that the screws had been tightened or after greased, I don't know. But I'd vote for the previous. At this stage they were also leveled, whereafter I protected the moving parts and the grease fittings and glas beaded them. Before paint a short grinding took the small rests of old paint and dirt away.
During 2001 - 2003 I was the project manager for a large software project at one of the largest insurance companies in the nordic market. Among other consultants in the project was Gökhan Sevik from our Turkish office. Being not only a superb software and business consultant, he was also one of the best door and hinge grinders/painters I've met. He stayed here in Sweden a couple of weeks at a time during late summer/autumn 2002. Most of the evenings and weekends he spent in front of his computer. But he also realised (he said at least ;-) ) that working in the garage from time to time, clears your mind and is as good as any Japanese spa. Thanks a lot for your help Gökhan!
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On the threaded plates that holds the top hinges there's is also the mechanism that is to stop the door in a smooth way when you fully open the door - door brakes. They were sandblasted, grinded and yellow plated before painting. The square shaped rubber buffer that softens the opening of the door, positioned at the end of the retaining strap was easy to buy as new part. What caused me some trouble was the so called Gummifeder or rubber spring.
In the third picture you can see two variants of this part. The top one is my original 219 plate and the lower one from the 190 door. Inside the box on the threaded plate, there is a metal "bowl" that is pressed towards the retaining strap with the help of a frame and a screw (see second picture). This bowl contains a rubber part, the spring, that gives you the ability to control the feeling of the opening/closing of the door - if it's going to be very easy or if you have to use some amount of force. This spring is not available any more. You can buy the whole threaded plate (was it 80USD each) but then the rubber will certainly be old and dry. So I bought some rubber from Kuntze here in Stockholm (be sure to buy rubber that is resistant against oil etc) and made them myself. The last picture shows you the finished piece of art, ready with moly grease on the retaining strap.
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Then they were carefully blasted (be careful if you blast the door skin, it can easily be misformed) and grinded as well as cleaned from old glue used to attach the door sealing frame. After that I tried the new sealings and formed the door edges so that they were nicely wrapped around the sealing (second and third picture respectively). After some serious de-greasing the doors were primed and painted with the black, final, 2K paint. This was done in a small "paint box", built in the garage I rent.
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Under Restoration-chassis, you can see how I put everything in place to test how it fitted. That took some time and patience and also some tools.
The entrance sill as well as the cover plate in the front are in almost perfect condition. There are however, some dents in the entrance sills, smaller rust attacks where they meet the mudguards as well as around the B-pillar that will have to be fixed. The cover plate has a minor rust damage around the hole for the right, extra light (fog light).
The front fenders had the normal rust spots in the lamp pots as well as the pipes from these. These were repaired/replaced. The left front fender also had a rust hole on the top as well as along the chassis/motor compartment. The rear fenders were in a quite condition, except from the pot for the fuel "hoses" and belonging flap. The put was taken of and the seams repaired. The flap had to be replaced.
When repaired, everything was checked and adjusted more than a couple of times against the welded chassis (see chassis restoration and Putting it all together).
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Then they were painted according to chapter "The next step - spraying the invisible areas" in Restoration-chassis. Note the sealant on the front fender as well as entrance sill.
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The first two photos are showing the coating under the hood. I spent some hours cleaning the hood, in vain. Later it turned out that it had some minor dents that would be too expensive to fix in combination with rust in the front. Therefore I've invested in a "new", almost perfect one. The other two pictures show the locking mechanism of the hood, before restoration.
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This is the first pictures of the restoration of the trunk lid. As I've mentioned under "The next step - spraying the invisible areas", also the trunk lids DB7164 got a little bit too glossy. It's not as bad as it looks on the photo (taken flash and day light)
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