What should I do with my e320 AMG?

[mj2k]

It's a long time in the future (as in Jan) before the MOT expires on my lovely w210 e320 AMG, but I've been banned from working on it by my family after nearly putting myself in hospital with welding fume fever whilst patching up it's various rust holes.

As far as I know it's now pretty rust-free and it's mechanically faultless, but at the moment it's clunky over bumps, has a few dents and you can see the rear wheelarches have obviously been rattle-can resprayed from certain angles. So there's still much work to do - suspension arms all round need rebuilding / polybushing, needs dent / rust-free n/s/r door and boot panels in the correct colour, and needs a rear-end respray.

Since I can no longer complete the restoration I was planning to do, what does everyone reckon I should work towards?

1) Carry on working on it in secret. This may take a very long time and holds little chance of success since I'll inevitably forget how things fit together, lose bits, etc if I'm by doing 10 minutes work here, 20 minutes there, and will eventually end up on Ebay as a 'barn find'

2) Hope it gets through the next MOT without too much work and run it 'til it falls to bits. This might require some tolerance from my family since it's still not as good looking as it should be and we now live in a 'posh' area, and will no doubt irritate me since I know it deserves better than this.

3) Get a restoration expert to finish the work. Will cost a fortune with virtually no chance of financial return, and as I know from doing this with the Alfa (different circumstances but same outcome), if it takes a long time to complete I'll lose my connection with the car and end up viewing it as a financial liability.

4) Sell it on to someone as-is asap. This will be a loss-making leap of faith since W210s aren't worth very much even if they're immaculate, and I'd just have to hope whoever bought it completed the work rather than breaking it for spares or running it into the ground. OTOH it requires the least involvement from me.

5) Run it 'til the MOT expires, then break it for spares. It's got the AMG monoblocks in reasonable condition, early-type E36 AMG bodykit which will presumably be worth a few quid, and many good body panels, mechanical bits, etc which would help someone else brave enough to restore a W210, but would be a real shame bearing in mind how great I think the car is, esp after all the work I've put into it

Anyone got any thoughts? None of the above really appeal to me...

 

[Dippo]

Put yourself up for adoption by a more tolerant family?

 

[mj2k]

Put yourself up for adoption by a more tolerant family?

Well to be fair I did end up unable to do pretty much anything for 2 days, could have killed myself (according to the doctor) and am still coughing a week later, so I think they have a point about putting my health before old Mercs...

 

[bob6600]

Safety first, but fix it yourself if you can

 

[mj2k]

Safety first, but fix it yourself if you can

Mmm, maybe. It is so nice to drive, but that'd mean I'd have to rely on the Alfa as my daily whilst it's off the road, and it'll take some persuading to stop my family 'performing an intervention' next time I try to sneak into the garage

 

[renault12ts]

OK, you're all thinking it but I'll say it...didn't know there was an E320...AMG.

 

[mj2k]

It's the standard E320 Avantgarde factory fitted with the AMG bodykit / wheels / wheelarch mods. Presumably they had a few E36 bodykits left over when MB took over AMG and hadn't started making the E50, so stuck them on the new E320 v6 instead...

The sideskirts are held on by screws hidden under some sort of vinyl tape stuff, so they completely confound you if you try to remove them in the 'normal' fashion, you'll always draw a blank if you try to search for parts for this model by VIN / reg number, and insurance companies charge you an AMG premium (presumably because performance wasn't far off the old E36) so it's an interesting oddity but nothing too special.

BTW vin decode includes: "774 - SHELL MODIFICATION FOR AMG-WHEELS" which threw me when I first got it, thought somebody had detuned an E36 or something but a few of 'em pop up from time to time here and there. More valuable for the bodykit / wheels than anything else tbh.

 

[renault12ts]

The shell modification would have been rolling the wheel arches.

 

[Monkeylegend]

Sounds like you have finished the welding so no more welding fever so carry on with the restoration. Make a nuisance of yourself around the house, mope around like a dog without a tail, you will soon be kicked outside, or alternatively you could be a little bit assertive. This is usually referred to as MTFU. This could have consequences

Your shout, but in years to come if you cave in to their demands it will drive a big wedge between you and yours resulting in divorce, leaving you single again to follow your hobbies as you........hang on a minute

As I see it you either pee them/ her off now or pee them off later, both could be the result you want so what are you waiting for.

Or you could be a complete wuss, subject to a future life of complete and utter subservience.

Or you could sell for scrap and buy a proper AMG Now we're talking.

 

[alabbasi]

Suspension is pretty easy work that can be done on the side of a steep road with nothing more than the factory jack and a couple of bricks behind the rear wheels . That was a joke.

You were careless and your family is concerned about you being careless again. Take a safety course and then talk to them about restarting the project. If you like to tinker and you like your E320 with an AMG sticker , you should be allowed to do what you enjoy provided that you can do it safely.

 

[horatio]

I had much the same dilemma with my old S210 E300. I spent a fair bit of time & money getting it into reasonable condition, then found yet more rust under the rear bumper... the result was an "oh FFS not again" moment, I acted in haste and scrapped it.

I regret doing that because it would have cost next to nothing to plate the last bits of rust and I could really do with an estate at the minute!

 

[claspknife]

It's a long time in the future (as in Jan) before the MOT expires on my lovely w210 e320 AMG, but I've been banned from working on it by my family after nearly putting myself in hospital with welding fume fever whilst patching up it's various rust holes.

As far as I know it's now pretty rust-free and it's mechanically faultless, but at the moment it's clunky over bumps, has a few dents and you can see the rear wheelarches have obviously been rattle-can resprayed from certain angles. So there's still much work to do - suspension arms all round need rebuilding / polybushing, needs dent / rust-free n/s/r door and boot panels in the correct colour, and needs a rear-end respray.

Since I can no longer complete the restoration I was planning to do, what does everyone reckon I should work towards?

1) Carry on working on it in secret. This may take a very long time and holds little chance of success since I'll inevitably forget how things fit together, lose bits, etc if I'm by doing 10 minutes work here, 20 minutes there, and will eventually end up on Ebay as a 'barn find'

2) Hope it gets through the next MOT without too much work and run it 'til it falls to bits. This might require some tolerance from my family since it's still not as good looking as it should be and we now live in a 'posh' area, and will no doubt irritate me since I know it deserves better than this.

3) Get a restoration expert to finish the work. Will cost a fortune with virtually no chance of financial return, and as I know from doing this with the Alfa (different circumstances but same outcome), if it takes a long time to complete I'll lose my connection with the car and end up viewing it as a financial liability.

4) Sell it on to someone as-is asap. This will be a loss-making leap of faith since W210s aren't worth very much even if they're immaculate, and I'd just have to hope whoever bought it completed the work rather than breaking it for spares or running it into the ground. OTOH it requires the least involvement from me.

5) Run it 'til the MOT expires, then break it for spares. It's got the AMG monoblocks in reasonable condition, early-type E36 AMG bodykit which will presumably be worth a few quid, and many good body panels, mechanical bits, etc which would help someone else brave enough to restore a W210, but would be a real shame bearing in mind how great I think the car is, esp after all the work I've put into it

Anyone got any thoughts? None of the above really appeal to me...

The one option you haven’t mentioned is standing up to your family and getting on with doing what you obviously enjoy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[mj2k]

The shell modification would have been rolling the wheel arches.

Yep, it certainly would

Somewhat bizarrely this seems to be the only way of identifying a 'proper' W210 AMG body though, which is quite amusing since the '320 amg' is plainly just a trial run for the later 'amg look' bodykits for more mundane models.

 

[mj2k]

Sounds like you have finished the welding so no more welding fever so carry on with the restoration. Make a nuisance of yourself around the house, mope around like a dog without a tail, you will soon be kicked outside,

Ha ha, yes, did the 'mooching around the house thing' once before, and started renewing the central heating radiators, pipework, etc. I was banished back to the garage pretty quickly when my other half came back one day and found the kitchen was a different colour, then found out the hard way that I'd changed the direction the bedroom door opened in

Or you could sell for scrap and buy a proper AMG Now we're talking.

Given my time again I think an E55 S210 in silver (I think Azurite looks far better but it's much easier to get 2nd hand silver body body panels) would be the way to go - it may not look as nice as the AMG (or 'amg-look') saloon, but it's far more practical and still insanely fast.

I had much the same dilemma with my old S210 E300. I spent a fair bit of time & money getting it into reasonable condition, then found yet more rust under the rear bumper... the result was an "oh FFS not again" moment, I acted in haste and scrapped it.

I regret doing that because it would have cost next to nothing to plate the last bits of rust and I could really do with an estate at the minute!

Heh, you're right there. It's easy to give up in a fit of pique and then regret it later.

I had an S210 300TD too, but weirdly I don't regret getting rid of it - it's insanely powerful, easily tune-able and is possibly the best sounding diesel of all time, but the E320 v6 has a lot more character (not all of it good). That extra boot space would definitely come in useful though...

 

[mj2k]

Suspension is pretty easy work that can be done on the side of a steep road with nothing more than the factory jack and a couple of bricks behind the rear wheels . That was a joke.

You were careless and your family is concerned about you being careless again. Take a safety course and then talk to them about restarting the project. If you like to tinker and you like your E320 with an AMG sticker , you should be allowed to do what you enjoy provided that you can do it safely.

The one option you haven’t mentioned is standing up to your family and getting on with doing what you obviously enjoy.

Well, yeah, but there is part of me which agrees with them - I frightened the life out of them, and myself!

I'm not so young any more and it takes me longer to bounce back from daft things like this, and I already thought I was careful enough. I was fully aware of the risks and had the correct breathing apparatus, etc but didn't realize I was welding-in galvanized steel sheet 'til later. I just though 'oh, that steel looks a bit dull' when it arrived and I only realized what I'd done after I developed the symptoms (which are a bit like a heart attack combined with the flu), went back to check the bill of sale for the steel I was using and put 2+2 together

Who's to say next time I won't carelessly order 2 pack rather than water based paint when I'm respraying the rear end and give myself even more serious issues?

 

[alabbasi]

Careless because you didn't know any better right?

That's what the safety course is for.

 

[mj2k]

Careless because you didn't know any better right?

That's what the safety course is for.

Annoyingly I did know better, I just clicked on the largest cheap lump of metal sheet in the right thickness off Ebay I could find without carefully checking the ad first, and then thought no more about it...

A lesson learned the hard way, but that big sheet of galvanized steel is now in the bin!

 

[alabbasi]

I think that your bigger issue probably welding conditions. I've welded galvanized steel in the past and provided that:

1) You grind of the zinc coating before welding
2) Have plenty of ventilation

You should not get sick. I suspect (suspect) that you had your helmet inches away from the metal and fumes while you were welding possibly because the lighting conditions were poor.

 

[mj2k]

I think that your bigger issue probably welding conditions. I've welded galvanized steel in the past and provided that:

1) You grind of the zinc coating before welding
2) Have plenty of ventilation

You should not get sick. I suspect (suspect) that you had your helmet inches away from the metal and fumes while you were welding possibly because the lighting conditions were poor.

Yeah, you're pretty spot-on there - I've never had any issues with welding coated steels before, though I do normally avoid galvanized steel. I think this was the largest amount of continuous welding I've ever done, I used about 0.7 square metres of sheet metal in 2-3 hours for numerous fiddly repairs.

Lighting was fine (I've got a posh arc-activated mask and a good inspection lamp) but I was very close to the metal because I was fabricating / welding some complicated multi-curved patches for the end of the sills & inner wheelarches in situ (i.e. couple of tack welds, beat metal into shape, cut out unexpectedly thin metal with grinder, tack, seam weld, tack on some more metal, repeat) underneath the car whilst it was on axle stands. And earlier I'd been grinding off large areas of surface rust bubbling up under the poor-quality primer which causes so many issues on these cars, so there was probably even more zinc dust flying about from that! And I had the garage door closed so I didn't disturb the neighbors too much, leading to v poor air circulation. So almost perfect conditions for inhaling large amounts of zinc particles really...

 

[Alex]

PAPR welding helmet is what you need.