Rocker panels

[Greg]

Need some suggestions about my rocker panel. I have an early 230sl production number 705, sold in NY and now imported to Sweden. Originally red color but now in metallic silver. Rocker panels has been also painted in silver by previous owner. Looks good but I am thinking of turning them into black. I prefer as original as possible. Did the factory produce any rocker panels in the same color as the rest of the body?

[DaveB]

There are previous discussions on this and the conclusion is no for production cars, only in a few of the prototypes. Objectively it looks ok, like you said, but originality-wise it's noticeably wrong to anyone familiar with them.

[Tomnistuff]

Take a look at the Technical Manual, the section on Data Cards and Codes, in the subsection labeled Paint Codes.  There is a highlighted link called "Rocker Panel Color" that will take you to a 2011 thread discussion of rocker panel colors, in which it seemed to me that it was pretty much the concensus that the rocker panel colors were Dark Grey (Dunkelgrau).  I recently painted mine Dunkelgrau (DB164), the same color as inside the trunk, and they look perfect.  Where they are located, down low and slanting back into the "tuck under" area of the car, they look black anyway.  To each his own!

Tom Kizer