Topic: 450SEL"restoration".

[TJ 450]

A large amount of progress was made, but there's still a large hole in the firewall to deal with. Thanks to Major Tom's assistance and many hours of work, some repair panels were fabricated from a W126 door outer skin and subsequently welded in.

I'm also wondering if anyone has any tips for removing the PVC underbody coating. I'd like to strip it off and redo the lot in those areas.

The result, primed.


Some stripping, poking and prodding revealed this, not surprisingly...






Tim

[s class]

That's some very nice progress, well done.  I bet you went to bed tired but smiling. 

Is the welding MIG?  Did you do it yourself?

[TJ 450]

I did indeed, although it was quite early in the morning by that stage.

Major Tom did the welding, whilst I prepared the sheetmetal. It was Gasless MIG welding.

Tim

[s class]

Well it looks like MT is quite capable with the MIG then. 

[Big_Richard]

welding is the easy part - getting the sheet metal parts bent to the correct shape and size is where all the work is, which i didn't participate in - that was all TJ's efforts

We started this job at 3pm and I went home at about 2am, Its a massive job.

[oscar]

Nice work fellas.   
I can sympathise with forming the metal.  Assuming you guys haven't got any special tools in the garage for folding etc?  Last time I made a small bracket up I was running around the shed finding straight edges and pipe to bash my sheet metal against.  That was after breaking my cheap vice too.

Re removing underbody coating:  I've used wire wheels on a 4" grinder and tried a few other wire bits for a drill.  Also tried a coarse flap sanding disc which worked well but clogged up when you hit paint.   From memory the wire wheels worked best. 

[WGB]

I used a wire rotary brush as well as paint removing layered discs on both 4 inch and 9 inch grinders.

It does burn quite well but you have to be very careful.

bill

[Papalangi]

This is for specific types of undercoating, I've no idea if it will work with yours,
http://www.eastwood.com/under-gone-undercoating-remover-aerosol-17-oz-net.html

Michael

[Big_Richard]

TJ's car was on fire on numerous occasions during the welding, that MB body deadener certainly is very flamable. It was all very amusing at the time. But the garden hose was never far away. Handy for extinguishing MB fires and also a never ending source of rubber flavoured drinking water.

[s class]

You do realise that a garden hose amounts to ideal lab conditions for cultivating huge quantities of bacteria, some of them associated with severe stomach ailments?

[Big_Richard]

in perth, there is so much chlorine in the tap water that if you test it with a pool testing kit it shows the result as "ideal" I doubt anything could live in it. Ive always drank from a hoses as have others and never gotten sick

[TJ 450]

Fortunately, there was also a source of filtered water in the Kitchen. It was a garden hose sitting in the sun, too.

I was using a wire cup rather than wheel. That underbody coating is very thick and drill attachment really bites into it with a lot of friction. I did notice that it lifts off when heated. Perhaps I'll try a heat gun.

It also seems that it's applied directly to bare metal.

I was unaware of just how combustible that material was.

Panel fabrication was done with a 4" bench vice, tin snips, 4" angle grinder, a selection of hammers, a small anvil and a few other tools.

Tim

[TJ 450]

This afternoon, I installed the dash and HVAC unit. Saturday was spent with Major Tom welding in the section of the upper firewall and applying filler to finish it off. It was then painted in satin black, but in hindsight white would have been more appropriate. I'll apply sound deadening over this anyway.



Unfortunately I didn't get to take any photos prior, as we were going flat out to get it done.

Tim

[Big_Richard]

I told you white was better

[s class]

That's very nice, impressive progress.  Did you have that dash refurbushed?