Hood and trunk lid (75, 88, 89)
Ponton Mercedes-Benz 220a with fitted luggage, © Daimler AG
Hood
The first two photos below are showing the original coating under the hood (the other two pictures show the locking mechanism of the hood, before restoration.). It is some sort of oil based coating, very easy to scrape off. Just a little heat and a broad scrape. Nothing like the coating under the fenders and chassis. According to my father it was there when the car was delivered and was not an extra order. He also never repaired or reapplied the coating so what you see in these pictures is what the car had when the car was delivered to him. It could have been applied by the Swedish importer at that time, Philipson, but I doubt it. As it looked, incl the masked parts, I would say that they must have the hood off in order to achieve that coverage and evenness in structure, i.e. that it was done in the factory.
Over the years I have seen other Pontons with the same type of coating, other types of coating as well as bare, painted metal. Given the many hoods without coating, I have hard time to believe that all have had their hoods taken off, cleaned and then been repainted on the underside. I.e., hey were delivered without coating. So many things on our Pontons differs due to model and date of production...
The underside of the hood on the sedans has the exterior color and finish (glossy), as the engine bay. The underside of the hood, as well as the engine bay, of the coupe/cabriolet/190SL models is DB7164 Teifdunkel grau, silk matt finish as per the recipe. Also the trunk and the underside of the trunk lid, of all Pontons models, incl the 190SL, are DB7164. DB7164 (or DB164) is very close to black so it's easy to mistake the color. Note, there are deviations in this matter if the car has been assembled locally, e.g. in Australia, South Africa and Denmark. Then other colors and finishes may apply.
Bowden cable for the hood, so far only two pictures of dirty screws...
Re-applying the sound and vibration dampening of the hood
I did however not use the original hood since it had some minor dents that would be difficult/expensive to fix in combination with rust in the front. Therefore I've invested in a "new", almost perfect one.
In order to mimic the coating under the hood (see pictures in gallery above) I turned to my beloved Teroson's "Telescope Pistol Multi-Press air assisted spray pistol" which previously had been used for sealing the seams before painting the chassis. I used Teroson’s MS 9320 SF which is supposed to be good sound and vibration dampener and can also stand the heat from the engine as well as oil etc. By adjusting the front nozzle, amount of sealant sprayed and air pressure you can get a lot of different patterns. If I opened the nozzle 0,5 turns, set material flow to fully open minus 0,5 turn and around 5 bar air pressure I got [almost] the desired structure. I probably should have lessened the material flow a bit in order to get the structure a little bit finer. If I remember correctly, I used 4, maybe 5, cartridges of 9320 in order to achieve the desired material thickness of 2-3mm. I’m very happy with the result and hope it will give a more silent ride.
Trunk lid
This is the first pictures of the restoration of the trunk lid. As I've mentioned under Putting it all together - Part III - spraying the invisible areas, also the trunk lid's DB7164 got a little bit too glossy. It's not as bad as it looks on the photo (taken with flash and in day light).
Lock
The trunk lock is taken apart by removing the screw at the inner end of the lock. I then carefully cleaned it, both in terms of a thorough cleaning and in terms of doing it carefully in order not to have the small pins and springs in the plug to fly out. When greasing the lock, the workshop manual says you should use “Universalfett Calypsol WJA”. That is however not available on the market as far as I've understood. Mercedes-Benz Classic instead recommends „sprühfett“ with MB article number A0029890651/09. Done.
