Mercedes 129 titivation

[r129sl]

I think I'll be picking it up on Monday. It has been flatted and polished with a final polish still to go. It only awaits the installation of the door mirrors, the bonnet badge and the antenna grommet (which things get in the way when polishing). In these unposed photos sent over to me today (the Man is not a photographer), it looks great.









I also reinstalled the seat cushions and new seat backs on the passenger side (to rectify the damage caused when I impatiently used it as a furniture removal van). The seat back panels are held in place by numerous brass Torx-type screws. None of your cheap and nasty brittle one-time-only plastic clips here: what a quality job the seats are. Anyway, the head rests (which were not re-coloured) look a bit dark. Hopefully I can clean them up and the seat cushions will darken down with use.

[r129sl]

CharlesdeGaulle said:

r129sl - does your bodywork man provide replacement wings, or does he need the customer to source and he fits? If I were to use him, I think I'd be looking for him to do all of it - sourcing, fitting painting etc. Possible?

Yes, he can source bits. He has an account with Merc Newcastle. I didn't source anything on this job, he did it all. On my 124 and 201 I sourced the body panels because that worked for me.

[r129sl]

TonyF55 said:

r129sl said:

Thanks, too. I see the difference and I want some plates like that. Do you have a link to a plate maker? I hate the '5' as well.

After much investigation looking at online plate makers, i came across this site www.proplates.co.uk that shows the S as i like them. I have not ordered from them yet, but will be once my new car arrives in Sept.

Plenty of other plate makers online show the back to front Z so i'm confident the site i mention will make the plate as i see it online.

Tony

I have ordered some from www.gbshowplates.co.uk who show the 'S' as we want it in one font and as a back-to-front 'Z' in another, so hopefully I will get what I want. The alternative would have been to go for the pre-September 2001 style font as I did for my 190 but for some reason I decided not to.

[r129sl]

Interestingly (well, not very), the legally correct numberplate font (referred to in the regulations as the "prescribed font") features the nice 'S', not the back-to-front 'Z' which seems more common. It also seems to me that the '5' is a bit nicer than that usually provided. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/561/schedu...

[r129sl]

I've seen an early 129 in light ivory over light brown leather, ages ago it was on Ebay. I think it was a 300. Anyway, they obviously exist. The first one here is a 600. I think it needs the pre-facelift contrasting Saccos in this colour. To be honest, the r129 looks better in any given colour as a pre-facelift car with contrasting Saccos (I know that is an incredibly subjective statement). Tops for me would be a 300 SL-24 in light ivory over brazil brown, medium red or fir green check cloth.

[r129sl]

Yes, the indicators are US-spec. I like a bit of amber but I think the full amber indicators would be glaringly wrong on this facelift car. I put the US-spec ones on my 124, too. Obviously, in the US, facelift cars had these indicators so they are part-right.

Light ivory would be a brave choice for a 129. I think the colour looks good simply because it is so different, albeit I see it about more and more. There's a strong precedent for it on sports cars:

[r129sl]

I am collecting the car today. Photos later.

In the meantime, the new plates have arrived. Do these meet with approval? I don't like the '5' but that's tough, I suppose. My office keyboard is minging as well, I know.

[r129sl]

But they have been on the car forever... I hate the postcode and BS number crap and will not have those things on my number plates.

Anyway, when I went over there today I spotted some little inclusions in the paint so he is going to take those out and get it to me tomorrow.

olly22n said:

I would have gone for the font of that era, rather than the smaller one.

I might get such a set and think about it.

Edited by r129sl on Wednesday 15th July 16:28

[r129sl]

TonyF55 said:

Whilst we have some font specialists on here, can anyone tell me what font this is ? I see this font a lot on 80's VW's and the non straight letters are quite curvy.

I used to be a proper font nerd but it is one of the many obsessions that has been crowded out by adult life.

Anyway, pre-2001, I understand there was no prescribed font, in the sense of a font precisely specified by legislation. There were subtle variations between the fonts used by different plate manufacturers. The plate you show on the Sirocco features a font best represented by Lutz Headline, owned and published by Lineto. See here: http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Headli... and here: http://www.leewardpro.com/articles/licplatefonts/f... It seems to be relatively readily available. I have noticed it previously and always rather liked it, although I feel it belongs on 1970s and 1980s vehicles. Although the font Lutz Headline was drawn in 1997, it appears to be based on anonymous fonts in use as early as the first half of the twentieth century. A fascinating business.

Edited by r129sl on Wednesday 15th July 22:14

[r129sl]

Pretty much a whole page of this thread is devoted to fonts. Great! Anyway, you can buy numberplates in Lutz Headline here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Classic-Car-Old-style-Nu...

Guess what I'm doing...

Edit: or not, it's too difficult. It also appears from gentle googling that this subject has been well-traversed by the VW forums.

Edited by r129sl on Wednesday 15th July 22:28

[r129sl]

I think it is the product of Unipart. My googling through up a thread on a VW forum in which a saddo like myself purchased on Ebay a load of old Unipart letters and plates. He compared these to the Lutz Headline font and noted how they used to appear on old VWs. It wouldn't surprise me if Unipart supplied Jaguar and AR dealers with their plate-making gear.

[r129sl]

I finally picked it up last Friday: the delay was my fault as I was selling my Golf and ended up with too many cars in town.

Unfortunately, the weather has been a bit grim and my wife was working all weekend, so I have had neither time nor opportunity to play with it. I am hoping to have some time off tomorrow to do some cleaning and polishing and to take some pictures. I have driven it and, as always, I had forgotten what a great car it is. More to follow.

[r129sl]

Still no chance to do a full write up with pictures due to work commitments and weather. However, the car is finished now and I am very happy with it. There were a couple of niggles: an old run inside a feature line on a wing mirror that necessitated a repaint, a masking line in the boot shut and a bit of dust in the paint behind the numberplate. This week the Man rectified all these willingly and without complaint, I felt a bit bad for bringing them up because it is not like this is a ten grand concours job. Anyway, it is looking spiffing.

It was the wife's birthday yesterday so we had dinner out and a night away from the rats. Here are our motors parked up by our lodgings this morning. I'll do some detail pictures of the SL today. On Saturday it will be at the Mercedes-Benz Club stand at the Silverstone Classic if you're there.

[r129sl]

I spent some time this evening getting the car ready for its trip to Silverstone. I just managed to get some snaps before the sun went down. In these pictures it has just been washed, dried and waxed but has not been detailed, so there are droplets of water and little smudges all over the joint. I will do it properly tomorrow. But I wanted to get some pictures in what was a stunning sunset up my way.

What is there to see? Well, it could do with being flatted back rather a lot more. You can see the wobble in the paintwork which immediately gives away that it's a repaint. I think it also needs a really, really good polishing with diminishing levels of pad and polish aggressiveness, then sealing with some good quality sealant. At the moment, it just has Autoglym Super Resin Polish on it (which I find quick, easy and reliable). I keep stressing, however, that I was, am and always will be on a budget. But the best thing is there is no rust and it is all the same colour. I have some new mats which I will put in tomorrow.

Some general shots to start off with, including the first, awful composition in which a road sign appears to be growing out of the roof.













Here you see how the rusty tail end has been made good again. Let's see how long it lasts.






Likewise the wheel arches. This is the one which needed the big repair:




And this was the one with the big ugly bleb which was starting to break the paint:




Here you see the bonnet refreshingly free from chips:






I quite like that last shot. Anyway, I also took some pictures in which I sought to demonstrate the delicacy, elegance and beauty of the lines of this car. Dimwits often described it as blocky or slabby when, in fact, if you look at it through open eyes, it is anything but. I think they mistake unadorned, pure and simple for those things, perhaps used to the plastic chrome tat, the swoops and slashes and the fiddly details that modern cars need to disguise their ungainly forms.

The front wheel arches are superbly done:






Grille, lights, wing and bonnet:








The rear wheel arches are more delicate than the fronts, but the body is wider here, before tapering at the tail. Sacco obviously found the trapezoid form satisfying.










All things considered, I am happy with the job and remain in love with this car of mine.

Edited by r129sl on Thursday 23 July 22:25

[r129sl]

Thanks all, your compliments are much appreciated.

The paint: it's not so much a wave as the usual orange peeliness. It really needs wet sanding (the Man has spent a day or so doing this already) but I have a DA and some Chemical Guys hex pads and polishes (yellow, green, black and blue pads, V32 and V36 polishes) which I will use to reduce it. It is just a matter of finding a day to do it. It's not really fair on Mrs r129sl and our spawn for me to spend all day Sunday polishing my car!

Thanks again. Increasingly sporadic updates to follow.

[r129sl]

cb1965 said:

Car looks fantastic now it's all back together and fettled.

Your comments about some people finding the design blocky and square etc. are interesting, but I think these things are too subjective to state a fact about anyone's opinion being right or wrong. The R129 design wise is a bit if an enigma to me as it has some lovely design touches, but for me is blighted by Mercedes leaning towards very 'square' designs of that era.

Their saloon cars of the time may have been uber reliable etc. but boy are they dull to look at and I can't help but feel that every time I see an R129 it's like the designer wanted to go further with making the design more angular but the production model was as far as he was allowed to stray from the box shape of the range.

The R230 is a nicer shape IMO although the R129s will be around a long time after the R230s have been scrapped due to their over complex and to be frank unreliable engineering.

You are absolutely right that looks are subjective. Taste is a matter of taste and all that. Nonetheless, while opinions as to the merits or otherwise of any particular design cannot be dismissed as right or wrong, the science of aesthetics is not a free for all in which nothing is right and equally nothing wrong.

Interestingly, Sacco has recently stated that the 129 is the car he is most pleased with. I am not convinced the 129 is either "boxy" or "angular". (Although your post suggests "more angular" is less boxy, it seems to me they are similar qualities; curvaceous or organic I would understand to be the opposite of boxy.) Anyway, the 129 plainly relies on the simplicity and proportionality of its fundamental form. It is form is curvaceous and organic, defined not by straight lines but by curvaceous shapes.

By contrast, the 230 relies upon disguise and jewellery: its fundamental form being of necessity compromised and ill-proportioned (the necessity being the accommodation and functionality of a folding metal top, the compromise and ill-proportion being the over-sized rear end, the under-sized cabin area and the over-long windscreen). These are disguised by the manifold (straight) feature lines on the flanks and bumpers and the shut lines, particularly that of the boot lid. The jewellery used to distract the eye is in the headlamps, the front fog lamps, the over-badging and the wheels. The 230, it strikes me, is an angular design: the definitive feature of the car in profile is the sharp, angular, wedge shape formed where the windows cut down into the flanks at the 'A' pillar. This is accentuated by the angular feature line lower in the flanks. The wheel arches are, obviously, less curvaceous and less three-dimensional than the 129's.

The 231 suffers the same approach in spades. Whereas the disguise worked very successfully on the 230 (subjective or no, only a blind idiot would deny that the 230 is an handsome vehicle), it is an almost total failure on the 231. I suspect the addition of aggression that came with the 231 was a stylistic mistake: a car of this nature should be elegant, not aggressive. The 230 is the epitome of modern elegance in vehicle design, it seems to me. It is a shame the 231 is such a dog's dinner.

What I like about the design idiom of the 126, 201, 124, 129 and 140 is, I suspect, the very same thing that renders those models dull to you: the absence of glitz, the simplicity of form. Whether you like one or the other, of course, is a matter of personal taste. But today's eye, it seems to me, is incapable of seeing past jewellery: that is why today's cars are bedecked with baubles and almost wholly lacking in substantial qualities.

From an engineering point of view, the 230 does not seem particularly weak. With the exception of the boot lid seals, it seems to be a fine and reliable car. I suspect it suffers the neglect of some of its owners (present company obviously excepted), especially as it becomes older and cheaper to acquire. They just don't want to buy new suspension struts when the old ones have worn out.

Edited by r129sl on Friday 24th July 11:41

[r129sl]

New floor mats from the original manufacturer, courtesy of Tim at http://www.specialvehicle.co.uk They no longer have or are prevented from using the little metal badges these days. Tim's website is rubbish but he is very, very helpful on the phone. New mats are so wonderful underfoot, but the newness will have worn off by tomorrow. Knowing my luck, I'll step in a dog st between pub supper and car.

[r129sl]

Did a 185 mile run tonight, cruising at 85 to 95 where appropriate. 31.5 mpg, which is fairly astounding.

[r129sl]

Silverstone today.

[r129sl]

Thanks all. Being likened to George Bishop, high praise indeed, I loved that era of Car. Bishop was always getting banned from new car launches after drinking all the single malt, moaning about the car maker's staff or the hotel they'd put him up in and saying almost nothing whatsoever about the Renault 12 or whatever he was meant to be reviewing. He wrote a great article about nice restaurants within striking distance of Calais, for when people used cars properly. I seem to recall it was illustrated with some good watercolours, from when people published magazines properly.

We had a fast run back from Silverstone yesterday. 3hrs 15mins without ever really going bananas. 250 miles, give or take. It is the kind of journey the car excels at. I spent the last 75miles being irritated almost to death by the driver of a Ford Fiesta ST that would sit inches off my bumper at high speed and either refuse to pass or, when forced to pass, would slow down to about 5mph less than we had been doing before. It peeled off to go to McDonalds in South Tyneside, which tells you everything you need to know.