Mercedes Benz W123 Body restoration

Peeling the paint to bare metal

Mercedes Benz W123 is my childhood dream car, I love the design, durability and legend of it. Back in the 90s I was completely stuck with one particular color Maroon Red with Palomino Interior it’s a killer combination. So with this in mind I was targeting to repaint my car in red and change the interior to Palomino.

Some corrosion spot was clearly visible

By assessing the body condition, at first I was planning to just go with re spraying my car without thoroughly peeling the old layers, this is to minimize restoration cost and time. But my friend Dodo managed to convince me that it will good for investment sake to do a bare metal restoration. This is to minimize the risk of having rusted spot being overlook.

It was one of the best decision in this project, Dodo and his team were peeling all the paint back to its bare metal, it was a long and meticulous job, and Dodo was right, there were many little spots already rusted and easier for the team to remove it from the body shell. Yes it needs an experience hands and eyes to do the welding job, luckily one of Dodo’s team is really good so we managed to keep the original curves and lines of this car.

While we were doing the deconstruction, we also pull out the interiors, engine and suspension system.

 

Really looong process!

This was a long and frustrating process, since your car was exposed and I realized that I had to tackle this tons of jobs.

Priming started after welding process is done

Despite all the troubles, it’s really worth the effort!

 

Solid right trunk platform

Left trunk



Priming and checking the original lines and corrosion spot

First layer of the paint

Engine hood and trunk were separately painted

Sanding off

Engine bay

Started to shine

Rear end

Rust free body

Mercedes Benz W123 280E 1986 restoration

The first time when I saw this car in my best friend's house

I never thought that it will take such a great effort to restore this car. Firstly because based on my research, parts availability is abundance and secondly my car condition was really intact, the first owner is protecting the car with anti rust treatment.




Straight body, thanks to Ziebart antirust formula

 

]But it turned out that I had to take an epic journey (seriously) to get it done. One of the reasons is because there was no project manager assigned to supervise the whole restoration process. So I have to juggle in between my hectic schedule to supervise the progress.

Roof fabric is still in great condition

In general we can divide the restoration process in two five main criteria;

1.       Body and paint.

2.       Engine and wiring.

3.       Suspension system.

4.       Interior.

5.       Detailing.

My strategy was to restore the body first, and while stripping it off then started to restore the engine, electrical, suspension system and interior.

Will completely restore the engine

Apparently if you have high standard reference in restoring car, you really need to spend time to brief all the mechanics to make sure that they have same understanding, and to get the best result possible.

The biggest challenges are many of the restoration team members is not professional enough, they don’t provide you with detail timeline, cost proposal and there’s no regular progress report informed to you.  

To make things worst, many of them don’t have quality control system which ended up in you spending more time to check and ask them to rework to match the quality you requested.

Will update you guys with the final result.

Happy Milad Raka, you're officially a tenager!

Raka turns 11, you are officially a teenager now.

 

Anakku Raka, makhluk Allah yang indah akhlaknya, hari ini usiamu bertambah sekarang kau sudah 11 tahun usia teenager yang penuh tantangan.

Raka besar di era dimana; banyak manusia berpendidikan tapi sedikit yang berperikemanusiaan, dimana profit jangka pendek mengalahkan kepentingan jangka panjang, dimana ambisi diri mengalahkan nurani dan nilai2 yang hakiki. Kuatkanlah dirimu nak, tempa fisikmu dengan latihan Cimande, Push Ups, Sit Ups dan lari, perdalam ilmu agamu dengan memperbanyak kajian-kajian ilmiah dan tekunlah dalam mempelajari ilmu di sekolah.

Hilangkan semua kebiasaan jelek dan bangunlah kebiasaan-kebiasaan yang baik, hal-hal besar terjadi karena dibangun dari hal-hal kecil yang rutin dilakukan.

Masa depan yang akan Raka hadapi akan jauh lebih menantang, derasnya informasi baik yang positif dan negative sudah tidak terbendung lagi, dan semakin mudah untuk mengkasesnya dimana dan kapan saja. Ambillah informasi yang positif nak, pergunakanlah seluruh panca inderamu hanya untuk berbuat kebaikan, karena sesungguhnya itulah perwujudan rasa syukur yang sejati.

Happy milad Raka, Ayah dan Bunda akan selalu mendoakan untuk kebahagian dan keberkahan Raka dan akan selalu memberikan support agar Raka bisa meraih mimpi-mimpi besarnya.

 

We love you!

 

 

Ayah