W202 paintwork repairs

[s class]

A few months ago I bought my wife a W202 C180. It is an early car, but in outstanding original condition - barring the two off-side doors which had a number of scratches and small dings and dents.

I decided that this would have to be remedied. This is how far I got as of yesterday :





Etch primer is going on today, 2K-HS tomorrow.

 

[Parks]

looks like your doin a brilliant job Ryan , keep up the good work

 

[s class]

Phew, thanks Parks, I'm glad it passed your inspection.....

In general, I prefer not to use filler - but this is the wife's shopping trolley - not a 6.9.

Well I spent a lot of hours on preparing the surfaces and getting the curvatues perfect - using templates made off the other side of the car. Although the areas of filler look big, they are very thin - at most 1 mm I would say. The exception is the nasty little dent at the lower front edge of the front door, where the door appears to have been opened against the jack. I had no access to dolly it out, so I just filled - about 3 mm thick, but its a very localised area.

The etch primer went on today and it looks great. The primer is shiny before it dries allowing a bit of a preview of the surface. No issues noticed.

Tomorrow its 2K-HS Standox, plus a guide coat.

 

[Michel]

It is almost impossible to straighten a panel and paint it without some sort of filler.

Be it 'plastic', nikky', 'bondo' or lead.

During my last visit to South Africa (pre my involvement with the M-Benz movement) I visited many body shops as part of my business tour at the time and was amazed to se that lead wiping and (metal) file finishing was very much the norm!

Down under, lead wiping is simply illegal due to the lead's harmful properties.
From what I can see from your pictures, your work is very impressive.

Well done!

 

[Parks]

Ryan theres absolutely nothing wrong with using filler, as long as its good quality and applied right, the best hot rod builders in the world use plastic filler and will usually skim the whole car to create a new flat surface after blocking it down flat......regards Brent

 

[s class]

Well 2 coats of 2K-HS went on nicely today. Looks great except for the slight dent in the rear door (the type from someone opening a car door against it) - that I hadn't seen before.

 

[Styria]

Hi S-Class, I reckon you have done pretty well. Isn't it amazing how much time one can spend even on these types of minor repairs. I did some rust repairs on Gleaming Beauty not so long ago, and it seemed to take forever. In the end, Parks finished the repairs for me and painted the the car.

It was strictly a 'get me by' job as I have four excellent spare doors already partially painted and under hi-fill primer, but it turned out to be better than expected. Regards Styria

 

[s class]

Indeed styria, Unless a person has attempted body repairs themselves, I think they would not appreciate just how time consuming it is. Painting new panels is one thing, its repairing rust and dents in old panels that takes so much time it brings tears to the eyes.

 

[s class]

I got the silver base coat and 2K clear on. Looking much better. I was in two minds about the accuracy of the colour match - in some lights it looks just a fraction (very very slight) bluer than the rest of the car, but in most conditions its spot-on. All in all, I reckon that's as good as one can expect when matching up to old metallic paint.

 

[Michel]

I got the silver base coat and 2K clear on. Looking much better. I was in two minds about the accuracy of the colour match - in some lights it looks just a fraction (very very slight) bluer than the rest of the car, but in most conditions its spot-on. All in all, I reckon that's as good as one can expect when matching up to old metallic paint.

From my humble experience in the auto body repair industry, it is impossible to perfectly match metallic paints, especially silver and gold...

However, you might be quite happy with your match and colours will always look different under various lighting conditions.

Full marks on having a go