13
Aug

2013 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este Mercedes 540K

I believe most of you are familiar with the status of the Concorso d’Eleganza event in Villa d’Este. Only a small amount of the finest world’s classic cars were accepted to this event and I was extremely honored to prepare this amazingly classy Mercedes 540K

In order to achieve this level of shine there was a lot of work to be done.
Regarding the paint, it had about average swirls as you can in the following pics

Some deeper imperfections that had to be individually handled.

Unfortunately the major issue was on the passenger’s side, where moisture from the garage’s ceiling that had flooded due to extreme weather conditions, dropped on the car creating some major stains. This is what I was up against.

The first step was to use a clay bar in order to remove as much above surface drop marks as possible

Even though it did help, still far away from fully removing them. The next step was to wet sand it. However that ceiling paint marks where really hard and stubborn that my initial sanding attempts hardly touch them.

That meant war. Ok then, divide and conquer. Changed my tactic from having a full go at the mark to creating small pressure points with the sanding paper in order to inflict some tiny spaces.

Getting to this

then to this

and finaly to this

Then polished it using a heavy cut compound

Also corrected the bottom

and then polished with Menzerna’s PF2300 leaving the final refinement for the end

Moving on to the top of the wing to remove further imperfections

And finally to the most difficult part which was close to the engine bay.

In order to reach the lower part safely some components had to be removed

Only to reveal this

Clayed again to see what I was up against

and finally

Putting the parts back in place

At this point I would like to take the opportunity to say a something I ‘ve learned working with classics. True classics are most about beauty, prestige and harmony. So looking at he above pic there something missing. If you take a moment to notice the head of the screws, they all look to different direction. Now notice the screws here

Now I can say it is ready

Corrected the rest of the paint drops

Then concentrated on dealing with the swirls

I am certain the designer of the 540 this is what he had in mind designing the side lamps

Right before final paint jeweling it was time to deal with under chassis and engine. Started with the engine.

And then underneath

The interior was in a really good condition so just the typical there, polishing the wood, dusting off and nourishing the leather.

This is the status reached having refined the paint.

Having finished with the paint the last step was to seal the top work that had be carried out so far. While I was polishing I ‘ve noticed some really tiny metal flakes in the paint. These flakes were so tiny that were only visible under certain circumstances and lighting, but still it was not able to capture them on camera without a dedicated macro lens. For that reason I wanted a carnauba wax that could be as crystal as possible but still wet enough for such a concours event. Since I knew what I wanted I thought why not make a wax to my specs and obviously not talking about scents or colors. So I wanted someone not only with proficient knowledge in blending but with a strong customer support. And BMD did just that. Between Stevie from BMD and myself more than 40 or so emails exchanged discussing oils, mixtures, scents and various sample prototypes were made for my personal testing. Did it worth it? Well, please judge for yourselves.

Finally I had the pleasure to meet Matthew Price, a really talented automotive photographer that took these pictures for me from the actual day of the event.

and some HDR ones.

Thank you very much for looking. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it as much as i did.

Kostas