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