1958 190sl Mercedes restoration
8/22/2020 I rolled the car to in front of the garage and put a coat of sanding primer on the car.
Late last year I got a little disheartened when I found that the paint blasting severly dented the aluminum hood and trunk. I decided to take a break on the body work and start stripping all the parts.
I also took apart the transmission because it was often difficult to put it in first and second gears. When I took the top off, it was obvious what the problem was. The left sliding part moves to the left to go into first and to the right to go into second. There is a lot of play in this part. The right sliding part is for third and forth. This part was nice and tight.
Here is a bucket of parts that I have stripped, ready for painting.
More sand blasted parts
4/13/2021 Drove to Bud's Benz in Douglasville, GA. Dropped off the entire interior of the car, the three steering boxes and the transmission. They are supplying a new tan German canvas soft top, German Square Weave carpeting and all new leather interior. David Latham, the guy in the red shirt below, runs the place. Real nice guy. We got a tour of the facility and met the people who will be doing the leatherwork and working on the transmission and steering box.
New wood for the soft top.
Below is a sample of the German square weave carpet, the tan German canvas soft top material and the tan Old Timer Bamboo leather.
5/14/2021 Received the picture of the transmission today from David Latham, Buds Benz, The parts laid out in front are the ones replaced. Looks sooo nice.
5/25/2021 Received pictures of the rebuilt stearing box
6/1/2021 Continue to clean parts. Here are two sets (4) of front brake parts.
Disassembled the grease fittings and cleaned them up
8/23/2021 Got these pictures today from David Latham at Bud's Benz.
8/31/2021 More pictures of the new leather interior from Bud's Benz. Also received is an extra hide for the dash, door top wood and ashtray.
11/16/2021 Believe me, I haven't been doing nothing on the car the past couple months. As I think I mentioned earlier, the hood and trunk got deformed during the blasting. I found a hood in NJ for $700. I drove there and bought it. It's really hard to tell the real condition until you strip the paint. Well, it wasn't much better than the one I had. I did buy a trunk lid from Buds Benz that looks pretty good. I then found a hood in NC and drove there and bought it. The guy sold his 190sl a few years ago and was selling a bunch of parts he had. I also bought the front and rear bumpers, regulator and a few other things. You just can' have too many extra parts.
I've stripped the hood, chemically, and am working to perfect it.
Here is the trunk lid, after chemically stripping the paint.
I decided to rebuild the brake booster. It seemed to work fine, but it is 60 years old.
There was a build up of ear wax in it. Not sure how that got in there. The biggest challenge so far is loosening the big nut the red arrow is pointing to. Need to order a rebuild kit. In addition to this, I've been buying new nuts and bolts for everything at the local hardware store.
I've also been stripping and cleaning all the zillions of parts. Every part I pick up I try to remember exactly where it goes. This is going to be a real challenge.
