With the Caravel mostly buttoned back up, I’ve been turning attention to the Mercedes 300D project. I’m getting deeper in to the car than I had originally planned, but for the most part it has been a gratifying experience and I’ve learned quite a lot.
Guys who fix up old cars generally fall into two camps: Do-It-Yourself (DIY’ers) and Checkbook Restorers. It’s a lot like vintage Airstream owners. I’ve been on both sides of that fence, and they both have their good points. Checkbook Restoration is kind of like sodding your lawn; it costs more but you have much quicker results. DIY is like putting down the seed and straw yourself, and watering it carefully for a few months to make sure it grows in perfectly. Doing it yourself means you need patience and time, but you can indulge your perfectionist tendencies as much as you want.
With a car like this, DIY is the only way to go. This will never be a highly valued car, so there’s no hope of re-selling it later and making a big profit. There were too many of them made, so they aren’t rare, and parts to keep them running are easily obtained. Already I’ve done enough on it in the past few weeks to equal a labor bill of at least a few hundred dollars if I had paid someone else to do the work, by taking on the jobs that are nit-picky and time-consuming and which don’t require much skill.
For example, there were adhesive decals on the front and rear glass. The front one was relatively easy to remove with some adhesive remover and a razor blade, but the rear decal was covering the thin silkscreened defroster elements. One slip with the razor blade and I’d have a non-working defroster. It took about 40 minutes of painstaking work to get that stupid decal off—but it was a satisfying job to do because by going slowly I managed to remove it perfectly, and it was the kind of thing I’d never want to pay someone else to do.
This is also a way to nibble away at the project list while I’m waiting for Pierre to arrive and tackle the major mechanical work. So I’ve installed a few easy parts (turn signal switch, oil breather tube, some little vacuum levers), degreased the engine bay at the car wash, and removed much of the interior. Nothing major, just an hour here and there, with one longer session over each weekend.
Right now I’m on an archaeological dig, of sorts. Pulling out the seats and the carpets revealed a horrifying history of children in the back seat. There were candy wrappers and arcade tickets, lots of long hair, dried up Coke spills, melted Crayon remnants, coins, pens, plastic balls, a Chinese finger-trap, and various “organic bits” that I preferred not to look too closely at. Many times you can buy an old Mercedes and find that the back seat has never been used, but in this case it was clearly a family car. I also noted that the family seemed to have an affinity for spilling cola in the car and never cleaning it up. I found at least four separate gluey old spills beneath the carpets, with coins and fragments of plastic toys cemented into them.
You know it’s bad when you feel obliged to don latex gloves to clean up the car interior. But as my fellow MB-fanatic Charlie noted, “At least there weren’t any used condoms.” The good part is that it all has cleaned up fairly readily with a Shop-Vac, a bucket of hot soapy water (I use dishwasher detergent to help dissolve the organic material), and a lot of scrubbing with a Scotch-brite sponge.
The big project has been re-coloring the seats. This car came with “Palomino” colored MB-Tex seats. MB-Tex is Mercedes’ name for their very durable vinyl, often confused with leather, and Palomino was a coach-leather color. I say “was” because no Palomino seats have survived the decades. They always turn a sort of mauve color after 25 years, with pinkish highlights on the tops that are most exposed to UV. Few people know how they are really supposed to appear, but you can see the difference in the photo below. The seat on the right is “before” and the seat on the left is “after.”
I found an interesting “elastomeric color coating” (something the average person would call paint) that is designed specifically for vinyl seats, and bought a few cans along with the necessary cleaners and primers. My project over the last week and into next week is to gradually re-color each seat from their current “Pinkomino” color back to the original Palomino.
It’s not quick or easy, but it is very satisfying. Each seat has to be carefully cleaned (two or three times with special soap), rinsed and dried, then partially disassembled. Then all the non-colored parts are masked off with tape and the seat is primed with special vinyl primer. This is wiped off, then the seat is rinsed and dried again, and finally it’s ready for the color coat. The color is sprayed on from a rattle-can and takes at least five thin coats before it fully covers.
What a difference! They look like new when the process is done. And, like the other jobs I’ve been doing, it’s the kind of thing that I wouldn’t want to pay someone else to do. For about $140 in materials and perhaps eight hours of time in total, I will have an interior that literally looks like new. This is less time than I put into fixing the Caravel’s water leak, and the results are more visible. I’ll also be shampooing the carpets in an attempt to make them look more compatible with the “new” seats.
I’m still trying to stick with my program of “something every day, even if it’s small.” This is my way of avoiding a “gumption block” that might build up and cause me to lose motivation. One day my only accomplishment was replacing a burned-out bulb in the trunk, but at least I did something, and that actually felt good.
Every day when I have a break from my day job I think about what needs to be done and then I pick something from the list and do it. Sometimes it’s a matter of breaking a big job into small chunks. Yesterday my only accomplishment was cleaning and coloring a single headrest. It doesn’t matter. It’s nice to do something physical to balance the time I spend doing intellectual work at the computer, and I find that the combination of both makes the day go very quickly.
It’s also motivating to share the project with friends and family. I know other people who are engaged in their own old car projects, motorcycle projects, boat projects, and I’ve told them about the things I’ve learned. Eleanor has assisted with several jobs. I’ve met people online who want to come by and help, or see what I’m doing. All of those things add gratification and even a tiny bit of peer pressure, both of which keep me moving forward.
But don’t call this a “hobby,” because I don’t plan to do it again. My goal is to have a car to drive, with the satisfaction of knowing what I did to bring it back to its original greatness. Once it’s done, it’s roadtrip time!
