Operation Dirty Penny - '75 Merc 240D

[electricalbox]

In for more.

[dineno]

Anyway, been traveling a lot the past few weeks and will be through the rest of the year but here's a couple pictures of the rust fixing so far. Still have some work to do on them but you get the idea.

[dineno]

xxrs

I'm actually in the process of buying a wheel company and will be rebranding. And guess which car gets the first set? This dirty Penny thing.

[SnazzyQ]

Please give us an idea on what wheels you're going to be running?

xxrs

[prawiejakpawel]

Fingers crossed for dealing with this rust. I am on board.

[aLaFleur]

Please give us an idea on what wheels you're going to be running?

[dineno]

i knew it was a rough car, but never realised there was that much rust

It's not as bad as it looks becuase its only external pieces on the lower portion of the car. A few repair panels and thing is as good as new. Plus i'm sealing everything up really good to keep things from rusting again.

[P78]

i knew it was a rough car, but never realised there was that much rust

[dineno]

Alright so we started working on the rust spots, but before doing so I went around the car took pictures of all bad spots. I'll post 'after' pictures next week probably. I think we'll be shaving the lower rear end body line while also extending the bottom of the rear end by about an inch.














While he's fixing all the rust, I've been slowly but surely pluggin away at the steel prep. Once this thing is polished and rust free its going to come together real quick. It'll be a lot of money to drop all at once though. Wheels, air ride, new weather seals all around, bomber seats, custom leather uplholstery everywhere else, manual transmission.

[dineno]

I temporarily hung the doors/fender back up on the car today. It was becoming a pain in the ass prepping the steel with the doors off the car, go figure. I had to grab a photo, had almost forget what these things look like with body panels on them lol

[dineno]

I mean, I'll be at SoWo, but you probably wouldn't want ODB in your booth leaking shit everywhere.

I didn't hop in that river last year to get the shot for nothing

[mikey G]

I mean, I'll be at SoWo, but you probably wouldn't want ODB in your booth leaking shit everywhere.

Quite reminiscent of the actual ODB. Except i'm sure he was spilling steel reserve and lean everywhere, not diff fluid

[theseeker411]

I mean, I'll be at SoWo, but you probably wouldn't want ODB in your booth leaking shit everywhere.

[dineno]

Just a heads up guys, if anyone will be attending SoWo we have one more spot open for our booth. Currently we have the dirty penny, my mk6 and a bagged R8

[dineno]

I'm still curious how you do the copper plating without dipping it into a bath. Pls give us some science lessons?!

There's brush electroplating which is the most common for difficult items such as this. Same concept as electroplating in a bath, but more controlled. There's something called electroless plating too which is a chemical reaction, but that requires a tank.

What you see in the pictures is none of the above though. Its actually more of a copper deposition using copper sulfate and sulfuric acid. The result is similar to what would happen during immersion of a part into a electroplating bath without going in "hot". The copper sulfate in the solution will instantly bond to the steel, but its only a very mild bond. I had to go through a lot of trial and error in the technique to get it to form a strong enough bond that wouldn't continue to oxidize and wouldn't just wash off. I got the technique down pretty well, but I have to be really careful polishing it with metal polish as when I work it too hard it takes the copper off in some spots. I'm working on getting the materials together to just brush plate it now because I'd like to have more durability in the coating. If I were clear coating the whole thing then it wouldn't matter, but I want to leave it raw again.