1971 Mercedes W108 280SE 3.5 V8 conversion to OM606 diesel.

Would you believe there's more chopping and welding still going on?! Anyway, I've also been very slowly working on the interior. I'm coming to the end of the work on the door cards so I thought I'd put together all the photos of the process.

My main reason for starting into the door cards at all was because some tool had stuck great big speaker holes in the two front doors as you can see in this photo:



However, when I started to investigate, I found that the original door cards were all disintegrating along the bottom where they were being damaged by water. they had also warped significantly with the damp.




So, I un-picked all the staples that were fixing the covers onto the backing board and removed the vinyl covers.


I then got hold of some stuff called Foamex. It's a foam board (mine is 3mm thick) that has a kind of plastic skin on either side of it. It's a little more flexible than the original door card material but plenty stiff enough with all the fixing points involved. The best part for me is that it doesn't care about moisture so should stay flat forever more! It's intended use is for printing modern signs onto for advertising, exhibitions, etc. I bought mine from a graphics printing place, only about 30 Euro for an 8X4 sheet. I traced around the warped old door cards as best I could and cut out new Foamex versions. I made holes where there should be holes, all done with normal drill bits/hole saws and a Stanley knife. Very easy stuff to work with.



The next step was to stick a sheet of spongy stuff over the Foamex board. I did this because the original "stuffing" if you could call it that seemed pretty tired. It's very weird stuff, a little like a finer version of horse-hair, or the fuzz off a coconut which is bonded to the back of the vinyl door card covers. I figured the sponge would fill things out a little and maybe add to the luxury look once the fittings and stuff go back on. There were some little metal clips had to go on at this point also. They secure the electric window switches for the two rear doors.

I used contact adhesive for everything. Spread it onto both surfaces and wait until it is tacky, then slap the two sides together.
The door card:


The sponge sheet:


And then the two together:



Once that's had a chance to dry, I trim the edges of the foam, clean up the edges of the vinyl cover with a rag and thinners and start to fix it to the new card one side at a time.
Glue on:


And clipped in place:


I've been building in a bit of pre-load into them so that when they are flattened out against the door, they stretch the vinyl a bit. It looks extreme but even warming the vinyl out in the sunshine is enough to allow it to stretch nicely and flatten out the card.





This is a finished one. It needs a bit of a clean but I'm pleased with how they came out:

quietsailor wrote: »

This is probably a really stupid question but here goes anyway - Did you put a different vinyl onto the new backing board? The speaker hole seems to have disappeared

You're right, I should have mentioned that I got a spare set of door cards from a scrap car which were water damaged just like mine but the original vinyl was intact.

Bigus wrote: »

I'd say he's half way through putting the original lV8 petrol back to in to it , before Brexit , because it's worth about £20 k sterling now as an original w108 and diesels have fallen out of favour.

No way Bigus! I'm hard core! I'm sticking it out!! ;-) Sorry for the lack of updates. It is entirely down to a lack of progress! I've been working on a couple of other projects. I've put a Ssangyong 2.9L diesel into a G-wagen which is my current daily driver and I've also been helping out a friend build a competition off-road buggy. Both are pretty-much complete, so I do hope to be getting back at the W108 very soon!