First a quick presentation of me. I'm 35 years old living in Sweden. Since I was 16-17 years old I have had an interest for vintage cars. I pulled off my first renovation of a low mileage Volvo 121 that had stood for years, when I was 18 and owned the car for over ten years. Right after the renovation it won some prices, but after that the car was stored in a heated garage and barely used.
After 12 years I decided to sell the car because life had changed and I wanted something more rugged that could take me to places where I like to spend most of my free time. Mainly to the mountains.
I'm an architect and the asthetics of the old G-wagens has always impressed me. Such a simple design yet so functional and rugged compared to modern cars.
I ended up buying a 300GD that only had two previous owners and seemed to be in very good condition. The car had been repainted with the windows out and the body didn't seem to need any work at all.
I realised that the previous owner had been struggling with water leaking into both the drivers and passenger side through the washer arms. It didn't seem too bad though and I reckon I could patch it up and repaint the whole floor to original condition.
After taking out the whole interior except the steering wheel and instrument panel I realised that the rear floor pan was pretty badly rusted. I started carefully patching it up but the sheet metal left was really thin. Since these floor pans can't be bought new anymore and scrap G:s with rust free floor pans aren't growing on trees over here I didn't know what to do.
Patching up the original floor pan
Finally I had to give up the idea of keeping every part of the car in original condition. I decided to carefully level out the beams below the floor and replace the floor pan with a flat piece of sheet metal welded edge to edge and spot welded to the beams. It all turned out really good.
Before welding in the new flat floor pan I painted it with 2k epoxy to get paint on the inside of all beams. Except the contact areas with the beams that got weld primer ofcourse. Also cleaned out all the existing structure painted it with 2k epoxy inside. There was no rust at all in the beams.
More pictures will follow of the welded floor pan, removed body coating and painting of the whole floor with 2k epoxy. Today I'm gonna spray epoxy inside all beams to get good rust protection after the welding.
At the same time I'm renovating the front calipers and have replaced all of the brake lines and fuel lines, fuel hoses, filters and most of the fluids etc. I have also removed the front axle to give it some new paint and inspect it. New plastic tank is waiting to be installed and the old one has been removed. New shocks and red/white springs are also waiting together with some more parts.
Right now I'm searching for a drivers seat for w460 because the one in the car had been replaced with a recaro seat. I have some offers on military ones but I will see if I can find one with the correct cover instead of sewing a new cover.