Broke Another Mercedes, Part II: Back from the Menders

About two months ago, I had the misfortune of a Volkswagen colliding with my front bumper. Last Friday I got the car back, with the damaged bits put right on the other party's insurance.

The repair started with me requesting very specific shops for the bodywork and paint. The bodywork shop Heinonen in Lappeenranta is a family business spanning four decades and is known for top notch repairs. A friend of mine took his 1964 "Pagoda" 230 SL there for a rear quarter panel rebuild and the car ended up excellent. Thus I trusted this shop with the front wing of my SEC. For paint, I chose Nokkala just down the road. This paint shop has the same credentials, and with over 60 years of family-owned auto painting, combined with a great local reputation, I trusted them to handle my car with the respect it deserves.

Not everything went smoothly. My insurance company decided to turn lazy, and took many weeks to even acknowledge my repair claim. It wasn't until I reminded them with another message that they promptly sent approval to have the damage inspected and budget set.

With the budget in place, the insurance company took its sweet time again until the budget was approved and I was allowed to book the repairs. There was probably a good 2-3 weeks of waiting for the budget approval, and then another week until the repair date. When the repair date dawned, it was found that the M-B dealer had shipped the passenger side chrome. Fortunately the chrome is a reassembly phase part and the correct part was shipped while the repair was progressing. The repair itself would take one week from Monday to Friday.

The original rust-free front wing was straightened and painted. The bumper was fully repainted. New Bosch (OEM) corner light was installed, as was a new chrome strip for the driver's corner of the front bumper.

This is what happens to bumper chrome on Gen-2 W126 cars after decades of use. They rust from the inside outwards. This does not happen with Gen-1 cars. At least the problem is not as pronounced. As you can see here there is nothing left even of the fastening points.

Visible side of the old bumper chrome, showing the rust on the right.

New chrome that went on the car. Interestingly it had the often-seen yellow seal paint on the back. I suggested to the bodyshop that Tectyl be added so that the rust problem is avoided to the best of our ability.

Bumper is attached to this part. The stem pointing downwards here is the part that broke in the collision. This part is clearly made of a light alloy; it felt extremely light in my hand... M-B was saving weight in surprising places.

Bodywork only took a day. Paint, two. Reassembly took a day. The bodywork shop, while reassembling, had trouble locating the block pre-heater (it is in the block, near the exhaust manifold, on the driver's side) but this was sorted over the phone.

While I had the car in a skillful bodyshop, I thought I'd have them execute a repair that I had on hold ever since I paid a visit to my friend Matyas in Helsinki. He had informed me of a repair he saw coming: both my interior door handles were sagging. This is a type fault in the W126 chassis. All the cars will face it eventually.

The door handle will start hanging, first a little, then it will start hanging outside of the facia it normally sits in, then considerable slop will appear (you can even move the handle up and down) and eventually, the axle which the handle revolves around will snap. At this point the door handle is still attached to the unlock wire and thus usable for opening the door, but you must position the handle with one hand and do the door opening action with the other. This happened to me on the drivers side a few months ago; I felt an odd sensation in the door handle and the off-track movement almost gauged it out of the door. The passenger side handle was also hanging and there was some slop.

Fortunately the door handles are still available from the dealer and even online parts suppliers like Autohaus AZ. From the local dealer I got both sides for less than 90 EUR total after club discount which I would consider very reasonable.

Old picture as a reference; you can see the passenger side door handle hanging at a downward angle.

Changing the door handles was a breeze for the body shop and I was only charged an hour's work for the two handles. This was a dirt cheap fix in contrast to it being a considerable facelift for the interior and I interact with the door handles more than almost anything else in the car.

Here are pics of the car as it stands today, door handles and all.

This chrome strip used to be the only one showing rust; I now have rust-free chrome over all of the front bumper.

Once finished, I asked the repair staff what the tally ended up at. I was told "over 1500 EUR but under 2000 EUR, closer to 2000". Thus my lowball estimate of 1500 EUR was surprisingly accurate. Yay for insurance.