Painting Process for the Interior, Underside and Engine Bay of Pagodas
I rarely find the time to post to the forum anymore, ever since I started running a full restoration shop for Pagodas. However, one question that has piqued my interest ever since I first got involved with this Mercedes model was how they were painted at the factory. About half a year ago, my shop began a complete restoration of a very original, low-miles and unabused 1969 280SL, which gave me further insight into the fashion in which these cars were painted. In this post I will only go into the details of the painting process of some of the interior portions, since the exterior generally doesn’t prove to be that much of a challenge to do correctly.
Overall the cars were painted largely assembled (and not with the doors, hood, trunk lid, etc. removed). Even the engine bay and inside the hood were painted in the color of the rest of the car, while the hood was already installed. This explains that the bolts for the hood hinges are painted and “glued” together with paint on a car that has never had it’s hood removed. Everything inside the engine bay was installed after the car was painted along with the complete engine, radiator and sub-frame, which were installed from the bottom of the car. By the way, the exterior of the car was not painted in one sitting with the interior. The exterior finish was of a much higher quality and required extra work.
Before I begin with the details, please keep in mind that there were variations of a number of the following observations, which I will address later on:
I have seen questions come up, concerning the rubber plugs in the headlight buckets or inside the wiper motor bucket. Should they be painted or not? The answer is that they were installed into the already primered body (which was dipped completely) and then painted over, along with the body color paint. How about the approximately 25mm holes (that you find only in later year Pagodas) lined up along the upper edge of the inner front fenders? Some years came with rubber plugs, others did not. I had always suspected that those cars that did have the eight rubber plugs, had them installed before the engine bay was painted, because I had found a ring of the original factory primer when I pulled out the plugs. Oddly, I never really found any good evidence of paint on the plugs themselves and I figured that the paint (which was applied as economically as possible at the factory) had simply worn off the rubber at a much faster rate, due to molding release agents found on rubber parts and the lack of any adhesion promoting paint prep. on these rubber parts. Well, this latest project showed clear evidence of paint on the plugs, even though the engine bay had never been re-painted. However, even on this well-preserved example, the paint on the plugs was very faint.
Even beyond that, the same “primer rings” existed on at least one side (the side that is hidden away under the battery tray), when I removed the rubber boots that cover the wires leading form the inner fenders, to the headlight buckets, although paint on those boots has been even harder to find. Also, there is a clear ridge of the original factory PVC underbody “Schutz” coating that was applied after the rubber boots were installed, as well as “Schutz” over-spray on the boots themselves. (This car had no additional undercoating applied in the past 38 years.)
I have seen paint jobs where these boots were not removed from the car prior to painting and people call that a “sloppy” job, but they may not have been completely wrong?…. Keep in mind that contrary to many over-restored cars seen as car shows, with a shiny paint job completely covering every inch of the underbody and inside the transmission tunnel, the factory paint job generally only had over-spray, which reached all the way onto the underbody. Depending on the color, the day of the week, the model year, whether the beer machine at the factory was freshly stocked or not and other variables, this coverage ranged from very little paint to extensive coverage, beyond the rocker panels and on to the floor, as well as the transmission support plate (which appears to have been held in place under the transmission tunnel during the painting process, not with the 14 screws used later on, but maybe two just for painting?) Again, I have seen variances on some of these issues. On this particular car, the transmission mounting plate clearly had masked the lower portion of the transmission tunnel from any of the factory PVC under coating or paint and the lower portion of the tunnel presented itself only in the very durable beige 2-k primer. The upper portion of the tunnel had some paint resulting from the engine bay over-spray, but there was obviously no attempt made to get complete coverage.
Details that are pretty standard are that the vehicle’s data plate was painted, screwed in place, on the mounting tray for the relays, the 30mm diameter bare spots inside the engine bay where the body was masked from paint or primer (In other words, the body was originally left BARE), such as at: The grounding spots for the brown wires near the windshield washer pump, at one of the mounting holes for the voltage regulator, just forward of the coolant reservoir on the inner fender, at the heavy grounding cable from the rear of the engine bay to the engine, at the negative battery terminal cable and for the grounding strap from the cylinder head to the upper, left-hand radiator support hole. The center mounted hood latch apparently was often painted in place along with the bolts that hold it, which is why the area under the latch usually remained without paint. However, I have seen more than a few cars that clearly had the bolts themselves, installed after the cars were painted. This appears to be true especially on cars that were equipped with the radio suppression option, on which a copper contact makes contact with the hood catch plate via an electrically conductive bare spot (30mm diameter bare spot, achieved by masking before the inside of the hood and assembled latch plate were primed and painted). On these cars, there was also a 30 mm masking sticker applied to the mounting perch inside the engine bay, where the copper spring, latch and screws were installed after the paint job. The areas where the cast aluminum doorstops are bolted to the inside of the a-pillar, are also bare of paint, but obviously these were not painted along with the rest of the car. It is likely that at the factory paint shop, substitute fixtures were bolted in place, to keep the doors from accidentally opening too far and damaging the fenders, while the painter painted the door jambs (picture).
Inside the rear fenders you will find complete coverage over the PVC undercoating, similar to the exterior paint job. The backside of the trunk floor’s coverage is only partial. Inside the front fenders the coverage is complete on the side closest to the engine bay, as well as the splash panels, at least down to where they meet the floorboards. The separate splashguards that are bolted onto the splash panels were painted already installed in the car. There is rarely evidence of paint on the splash guard rubber seal due to years of “erosion” there. Also, the paint coverage on the surface inside the fender itself can be faint to almost non-existent.
The backside of the headlight buckets has a fair amount of paint coverage.
What else?… In the front, the frame of the body would have been supported at the two consoles at the very bottom, front of the engine bay, where the studs that hold the front sub-frame longitudinal stays protrude. For this reason there is no paint found at the very bottom of these consoles or the studs. Other parts like the bottom of the steering damper anchor stay and the steering idler arm stay also received little coverage on the bottom. The coverage to the left and right of the transmission tunnel also gets much thinner as you get closer to the floorboard.
You can all decide for yourselves what all this means if you are doing a “frame-up” restoration on your cars, but at the very least I thought I’d pass the information on, because as the last “untouched” cars undergo restoration it will become harder to know just what might be considered “correct” at a car show, for instance, or simply for those particular enough to care about these details. Also, I welcome other well-informed comments from owners or restorers who have made first-hand observations, so we can collect this information.
Regards, Tom Colitt
ClassicAutosLA
Tom Colitt
