Body shop W245 edition

– A tale about rusty body panels and Mona Lisa

I cringe when I see rust on on cars. It clearly shows neglect and non interest on the owner’s part. It could be as simple as lack of washing the car, ignoring stone chips or heavy use resulting in deep scratches. However car use in winter conditions where the use of road salt is common, small openings in the paint can cause large rust areas to appear quite fast and the owner can’t always be to blame. Therefore it’s more important to regularly wash the car in the winter than in the summer time. Due to the impossibility to avoid any rust appearing in these conditions, is the reason I keep the vintage classics parked in the winter time. It is very hard to maintain older cars during winter time and the rust is very pervasive into every area. So why not use a disposable B-Class during winter?

So when I took over the B-class of course it had rust after many years winter use in Norway. Luckily all of it is just surface rust, but if not attended to it can develop into holes already in the next winter. Along with the other issues on the car I needed to get this fixed before using it.

The B-Class has a design issue in my opinion since the wheels slightly go too far outside the narrow wheel arches and stone chips really eat away the paint on the edges as well as along the sides of the skirts. This is most apparent on the rear wheels, but also an issue in the front. This happen even with the standard tire widths. So expect the paint to be chipped away by default. The car should have really have installed some mud flaps.

I had to address all four wheel arches of varying degree of rust, as well as the area beneath the side skirts and the underside of the drivers door. There was also beginning to form rust in the drain area for the window wiper mechanism on the passenger side. I think the main cause here is winter use,, but it could have been prevented more by washing it more often to get the salt off.

With paint it’s better to do all areas you want to paint in one go since the process of masking and drying of multiple coatings take forever to prepare and do. The painting in itself is the fast part of it. Then you have the surface preparation such as rust removal and making sure it’s completely clean. There could be additional steps of applying filler and sanding to make it even nicer. With this car I totally neglected filler and sanding since achieving the Mona Lisa with this cheap car is not worth it. Remember the longer time you use on a paint job the better the result. I tried to get a balance between visual satisfaction and function. Protect the car from rust while looking nice from 1-2 meters away.

Now let’s hope this lasts through the winter. I’m pretty certain that I will have to tend to new stone chip spots in the spring, but that’s the life when they put sand and gravel on the icy covered roads to grind away my paint. Then pour salt in the wounds so the chipped paint can start top rust. Thank you so much, sincerely! Looking forward to the summer already.

So about that Mona Lisa. Close enough huh?!?!?

Robs Out!