Mercedes Progress

I got all the trim removed on the Mercedes, and  I found nine pieces that were too damaged to save without serious hammer work, or worse. All the trim on this car is made of brass and some of it is solid cast brass. The pieces formed from sheet brass are the hardest to repair so they will go to an old metal man in Bell Gardens. He does stuff like make Duesenberg fenders from scratch and Ferrari body parts from sheets of aluminum. It's an old trade that has largely disappeared for several reasons.

At any rate, the long trim pieces on the quarter panels were very damaged and one side was actually repaired with epoxy and then chrome plated. I have no idea how it was even in one piece. I had the chrome stripped and brought it to the metal man, and he asked me to make some templates that he could work with. His plan is to stick them together using silver solder and then fill them solid with melted bronze rod. Then they will be reshaped correctly.

Here's what it looks like, so far.

With the chrome plating stripped off you can really see how damaged these quarter panel trim pieces are. The other side came back from stripping in two pieces and they were both full of holes where they had been polished too much.

The trim is supposed to be held in place with 10-32 clips and nuts but it was attached with wood screws, christmas trees, and whatever they could find. I taped the trim to the quarter and made sure it was lined up correctly with the reveal line in the body. It took a bunch of gentle tweaking to get it right.

Next, I took some pattern paper and traced the contour of the trim in place on the quarter panel. I transferred this to a piece of stiff panel board and took it all back to the metal man. He will use this pattern to make sure the trim has the right shape when it's done, and he will also fit the correct 10-32 fasteners to the back to the trim piece.