Mercedes-Benz W124 project.

Cars and vehicles has been a passion of mine for as far as i can remember, starting from a very young age. Therefore it naturally came to me to start which would be my first “project car”/restoration. This project being on a 1990 Mercedes-Benz W124, the 250D model with a 2.5 litre, 5 cylinder, naturally aspirated diesel engine (OM602). This car was the perfect choice for me for my first project, as these cars are not very expensive relative to other prices of classic cars, another reason being that these cars are notoriously reliable with some engines pushing up to 1,000,000 miles with proper maintenance and car. I originally bought this car at auction on eBay for £2,100, 90,000 miles on the clock and a lot of work needed to be done to it. I knew it needed serious work, such as a respray, which at the time i knew i intended to do myself, to keep the budget within a sensible range. These are the first pictures of it when it got home from the journey home.

The first things i did to it was to sort out immediate problems that could cause further damage if not taken care of, consisting of things such as removing water build up in the rear boot/trunk of the car and to remove the hood/bonnet insulation to stop bits of it from falling into the engine and possibly causing damage, just little jobs like that. If i would have done anything differently i would have absolutely made a list or spreadsheet of the things that i wanted to do to this car in a general order, including giving the car a full inspection first and not just find the jobs along the way which is what i did in this instance. I did make an excel spreadsheet on all the costs that i had spent restoring this car to keep a track of what i have done to it. But the main thing i knew i wanted to sort out was the bodywork, it had a very poorly done paint job on it, with drips, rust and major imperfections in the bodywork, including painting over vital seals. I knew i wanted to sort this out as soon as possible.

So i did, i rigged up my own “diy” spray booth by putting plastic sheeting on the walls of a spare fairly large shed we have in the garden, put some lights in and a small space heater. I started off by painting the boot/trunk lid which had the worse of the bodywork, with major rust and pitting especially after removing the rear wing/spoiler. But i would come to find that i would have to sort this out again as it was my first time and i made many mistakes along the way which i came to learn from.