Door panels, armrests (72, 73)
Interior of a Mercedes-Benz type 219, © Daimler AG
This is how my interior looked like originally, except the sun visors and the armrests.
Door panels
The old panels where actually not in such a bad condition. Had I had the possibility to restore with a nice green gray cloth interior these could have been cleaned up.
The door panels were renewed and covered with a leather skin and the chrome lists attached as on a car with cloth interior. There shouldn't be a waffled intermediate part as I had in my original interior. Had my door panel had a decorative seam/base/socle at the bottom, it should have been done in the same way but made in leather.
If you have problems with the chrome lists, they seem to be available, but for very high prices if you want items in good condition and don’t have a good network or luck. The reason I know this is because it turned out that one list on a rear door was worn out just above the window crank and the lower one, my saddler had damaged without telling me. So, out I went for a search. The lower, shorter one was not an issue, but the one above the window crank was. In my case it should be 76,5 cm long. I could get 78 cm (“normal” 219 lists, but my car is not normal as I’ve experienced several times) or e.g. 82,6 or 84,4 cm long ones but not 76,5. The 78 cm would be too long for my panels and look very odd!
One solution would of course be to shorten a long list. Two methods would be possible. Cut and remove 1,5 cm and solder the tip back again or cut and bend the new end into a similar shape as the original tip. These aluminum lists have however a very thin layer of anodized “chrome” and that is extremely brittle and wouldn’t hold for an adjustment. Beside this you have the difficulties of soldering the thin aluminum. I doubt glue would hold, but at least it would make re-anodizing impossible. Re-anodizing is not an option in Sweden and is in general not recommendable on “old” aluminum. Sending the soft lists “around the world” without knowing what I would get back, except an expensive invoice, didn’t feel good.
Mercedes-Benz 219 Ponton interior, © Daimler AG
So, the search continued. Finally, after one-month Mr. Apel on the Ponton list mentioned he had two. Ordered them directly, paying more for the freight than for the parts, as usual when it comes to buying from the US and having them sent to Sweden. After more than 3,5 month they still hadn’t arrived and Mr. Apel refunded me. He had no more lists. But another 2 weeks later they turned up and I paid Mr. Apel again. After 5 months search, I could finally mount them.
Inside the chrome lists you have a metal strip with “tongues” that are pressed through the panel and hold the chrome list in place. One of these had been bent off. That is however easy, quick and cheap to fix with a soldering iron.
Holes for the single cap rivets that fixates the ashtray holders has of course to be present. Between the door panel and the reinforcement plate on the backside of the panel you have a piece of cloth. The cloth was the similar to the type of interior cloth I already had so I made new. Everything riveted with standard rivets. The “male part” of the “nipples” of rivets must however be shortened a bit. Then it's just a matter of hammering, preferably with something soft like plastic, being careful so that you don't crack the bakelite or get ugly markings in the visible part of the rivet, the "female part".
The restoration of the ashtrays can be seen under Sun visors, straps (81).
Armrests
The armrests were taken apart, bakelite polished and the base for the leather was repaired with spray foam which is easy to form. When redoing the armrest leather they hung moist leather over the "foam", attached weights and by doing so formed the leather perfectly after the base.
