Race Against Time

Well, I cracked on with the refurbishment of the Mercedes 500SL headliner, having a target of accomplishing it before the Chepstow Classis Car Show, into which I'd entered the car.

No.2 Son, Bruno, was dragooned in to assist with the dismantling of the surrounding panels and sliding the headliner panel out. And what a sorry state it was in. Almost all the foam had disintegrated into a fine, sticky powder.

Scrubbing the fibreglass panel with a nylon brush attached to a drill achieved the desired level of foam and glue removal, enabling the new headlining material to be stuck to the fibreglass panel with spray adhesive.

Then a bit of judicious trimming and folding the edges over and I was ready to reinstall.

Not a perfect colour match, but I prefer a lighter shade, plus there is a variety of creamy shades within the cockpit anyway, so it didn't look out of place at all.

I managed to save myself £300 on using a professional retrimming company and £150 on a bloke in a shed who does it as a hobby, and couldn't possibly do it for another 6 months.

No. 2 Son and I finished it on Friday evening at 6pm, ready for the Chepstow Classic Car Show at 9:30 yesterday, which I videoed below.

A happy bunny.

Didn't see a single GT6, but there was another 500SL - a 1999 model. The owner had picked it up for £6,000 with 38k miles on the clock, which is s steal given its value of around £19k. It appears in the video. We had a good natter, of course.

I'm not certain whether I've updated the blog with the progress on the GT6, but the recalcitrant UJ was finally parted and I removed the engine and gearbox.

I thought I was in a position to lift the tub off the car, but 4 bolts poking from the radius arms at the back were poking through a vertical bulkhead in the rear compartment. Tese bolts are notoriously difficult to remove due to rusting, but I had them off within an hour. 

The engine is now resting in my trailer at the top of the garden and the next job is to lift the tub off the chassis, move the chassis up next to its cousin at the top of the garden - the one with the rebuilt front suspension and MX5 rear axle that I'm going to use - build the rotisserie and mount the tub on the rotisserie. Not much to do then.