Over the last couple of months I've been doing a variety of restoration work (body, mechanical, trim) on a friend's car. Its a W124 300 wagon with full AMG mods - suspension, stage 2 engine, trim kit. Its a beast - stroked and bored to 3.6 litres, producing nearly 300hp.
The right rear quarter had a couple of nasty dents where his wife had backed up against a tree.
THis is how it looked originally - its not a great photo - unfortunately the best I have - what it doesn't show is that there were a series of dents ahead of the tail light area extending up towards the antenna aperture.
Now here's the catch - the owner has been absolutely adamant that he will not accept any body filler at all. The extreme difficulty is that the area is double skinned - isn't it always when there is a difficult dent?
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSC00029.jpg)
Some weeks ago I had the paintless dent guys in, and they lifted the dents on the side to about half of their original depth. The 'inverted egg' dent right in the corner was impossibly stubborn. In this photo I've resorted to non-paintless dent removal techniques and made some progress. You can see the remaining depressions down the side of the car. Quite a challenge to complete this without needing filler :
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1622.jpg)
Last week I spent some 4 hours working on the area with levers and 'spoons' that I made specially for the purpose.
Here's some midway shots of the progress. I like to work with the paint in tact as long as possible, and periodically pass a file over the area to check progress.
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1629.jpg)
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1628.jpg)
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1630.jpg)
Coming along quite nicely - here are the final results - I have achiveved the goal - no filler will be needed, only a couple of coats of 2K-HS primer. Yes I'm proud.
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1631.jpg)
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1632.jpg)
Beautiful work. It is great to see what can be done with patience and hard work sticking with the original plan.
Pretty darn impressive sclass.
You doing the paint I assume as well. I hope so, I want to see your prowess with a spray gun. 8)
Thanks for the compliments guys.
I certainly will be doing the paintwork - but only when all the damaged areas are ready for paint - and only once the car is mobile so I can get it into the booth.
I have done one bit of paintwork, just to check that the colour was right. This is a replacement trim panel for the left rear door. :
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g85/mercedes_s_class/124090/DSCN1482.jpg)
Well done!
How about opening a Merc body shop in Oz, as a sideline?!
Beautiful work Ryan.
One thing abbout a 124 is that there is enough thickness to the metal to alllow it to be worked.
Bill