First Wash in 16 Years: Mercedes SLC 450 Disaster Detail Buy and Flip!

Hey guys, in today's episode, we're working on this 1978 Mercedes 450 SLC. Now I found this and the BMW 535i on the Upper East Side in a garage. This thing has been in storage for over two decades and we went inside. We rescued him and brought him back. here we're going to clean it up,

detail

it and then trade it in for profit today in this episode of drive and protect oh so close. I want to say a big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Learn more about the upcoming SL line. has been associated with Mercedes' finest sports cars and championship racing teams since the mid-1950s, none greater than the revered 300 SL Gold Wing, the Holy Grail of Mercedes collectors, the 450 SLC is the version SL Roadster coupe with a slightly longer wheelbase to accommodate the two rear seats has a fuel-injected, overhead cam 4.5-liter V8 with nearly 200 horsepower.

This is a super comfortable leather upholstered and air conditioned Extreme Cruiser. Starting in 1978, Mercedes offered a super cool wood grain center console and it's in excellent condition and on this car, so there's no way you can sit another day in a Dusty parking lot to find it a new home after Pushing it onto the lift and almost losing my hand in the process, we lifted it onto the platform along with the 535i. They were both I bought it for five thousand dollars. Now I donated the BMW to a great guy and former Marine in last week's episode, so be sure to subscribe to see all of our

detail

ed rescues, but for the Mercedes I need to recoup my investment and keep the shop running.

We are going to turn this around for profit once we get back in the studio you can see it hasn't been

wash

ed in many

years

. It's covered in black dust or something like soot, which is probably exhaust fumes from being stored in a New York City garage. There are no vents or windows, that kind of thing, so the

first

step is to pressure

wash

the soap and then see what's underneath the layers of dirt. create your own website this is how it works now one of my favorite things about Squarespace is that you can create a community within the website with a fully integrated comment link system that supports replies to threaded comments and even likes.

They also have powerful blogging tools. to help you categorize, share, and even schedule posts, you're trying to get an old cart up and running, you can share it with the world, connect with your audience, and generate income through exclusive members, only content manager members send emails. Communications and leverage audience insights all in one. easy-to-use platform, you can expand Squarespace's already powerful eCommerce capabilities with Squarespace extensions. These are third-party tools that can help manage inventory, promote products, streamline accounting, and reconcile and even file sales taxes while shipping items around the world. You can even display social media posts. like this one here on your website and vice versa from your website to your social media so your followers can share it too.

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domain or website purchase. Let's go back to the episode with the paint now clean and dry. The second step is to rejuvenate the interior carpets, the plastic center console and remove the white mold on the seats with my friend Ranan for additional help, we removed everything from the interior including the floor mats and the rugs underneath which revealed rocks that were probably buried there forever. Wow, that's a lot of dirt because all four mats come completely out of the car.

I didn't need to remove the front seats to clean underneath, but instead spent time removing the back seat because one, it's very easy to do and two, it's usually home to critters that need to be, shall we say, relocated before I leave. and I sell the car there, the same thing happens on the back of the seat and it is very easy to remove and very easy to clean for the plastics. I'm using ammo foam interior cleaner, interior brush, and steam to kill mold before cleaning with a microfiber. towel tonight, please note when I use the steam machine to clean the leather or to remove mold.

I like to add mousse conditioner to the now-cleaned pores after work, but I'll do that once everything is done a little later. weird for vents, I'm using a foam covered mini fleece to get into all the tight areas. Now this is the same material and construction as the big wheel we are all familiar with and have used on rims forever etc, but this has simply been scaled down for super tight places, you can use it on the motor, caliper and Of course, the interior vents. Then there are carpets and these things are pretty gross but the diffuser mixed with a shag carpet cleaner and the reservoir made a significant difference on just the first pass alone, then I hit it with some steam to open up the fibers and then I was done with the steam vacuum extractor.

The before and after here were huge, this made a huge difference and I think the value of the car before. and the value of the car afterwards, okay, look at the trash we took out of the carpets, pretty disgusting, but it's better to be here than in the car, on one of the carpets that was very dirty, kind of extra dirty. I had to use the brush and Titan 12 Degreaser to remove the stains, which I think were more oil based stains that I couldn't remove with the initial step, so when you need to use a little more power, the piercing brush can be useful for the rest of the The seats have now been cleaned and reinstalled in the car.

We apply elk conditioner to very thirsty, sunburnt leather. The exterior plastics, the paint were not only swirled, but also had calcium stains that usually looked yellowish or orange, again, very common in New York City parking lots, all of them. It seems to drip from the ceiling and leave these marks, so we definitely had our work cut out for us. I first tested the paint with a wool cutting pad while Vernon worked on removing the masking tape stuck to the paint for

years

. Normally, duct tape is easy. If you fix it, it's no big deal, but because the decals went through the summer and winter heat and cool cycles in the garage for many years, they became embedded in the clear coat and were very difficult to remove without damaging the clear coat in the process to do this correctly and not cause any damage, you have to use a plastic razor blade, a little solvent and a lot of patience, okay guys, now I'm behind the camera.

I just did a test and you guys I can see the difference from left to right. I did it right here. You can see it's much brighter, much lighter than this side. Now there's a lot of dirt embedded in the paint and while I'm polishing, it's just. it comes out where we couldn't get it out with a wash, but you can see a distinctive line right there that's the before and after and of course in Silver it's much harder to show a big difference than in black, say, but if you zoom in Very quick here you can still see all the Swirls and again it's Mercedes paint so you're going to have to put a little bit more on it because it's a little bit harder so in this case I'm using a blue wool cutting pad with Blue Compound which is a little bit more difficult.

You can see it here. Perfect Circle, come here. Now you've got the scratches, the swirls, the love marks and all that kind of stuff, so we're going to repeat the process on the rest of the car. It'll look soaked like this side when we're done pretty excited about the now restored paint. I added Ammo Reflex Pro finishing wax to increase the color and depth, have a wetter look and of course add some protection to the paint before it goes away. For sale with the paint looking a thousand times better. I focused on the wheels that had cement splatters, especially on the driver's side front tire tread.

We need to remove this, so the best way to remove paint cement in this case is the wheels. I'm using a vinegar mixture, pure white vinegar 50 50. You can play with that ratio and you're going to let it soak. Now this is in a bottle of alcohol. I'm just using this because it was empty but I put 50. Vinegar 50 Water, you're going to let it sit there, the acidity of the vinegar will loosen a lot of the cement and you can get in and you're going to have to polish afterwards and use a plastic razor blade or your finger, oh . there it goes you can see it's starting to come off and it will come off right away otherwise it's just a nightmare if you don't use vinegar but they make specific cement removers but it's basically the same as just making the mixture.

Yours is a 50 50. Here it goes, look, we're going to take it out right now, so I have to clean this up. I have one or two tires that have this on them and then we are ready to hit the really stubborn cement. One trick is to soak paper towels in your water and vinegar solution and let them soak in the area for about 10 to 15 minutes, in my case while I was waiting the 10 to 15 minutes I cleaned the aftermarket exhaust with my liquid polishing pad and a microfiber towel on hand and the windows with a scouring pad and squeegee, after about 15 minutes it was time to get back to the wheels, once all the cement was removed I washed the wheels as I would do normally and then I polished them because I was using that plastic razor blade and you could see marks. new again it looks good as a last step I applied a mud coating to the tires and the black non textured rim before Wild Man Axel from Axel Foreign Auto Parts came to help me get started after all these years yeah You remember my friend from Axel. that he bought the Audi GT a few months ago and has a large collection of cars to safely start the engine.

Of course we checked all the fluids, but I wanted to make sure the fuel distributor was receiving fuel from the fuel pump under the gas tank. To test this, we disconnected the line from the distributor to see if fuel was coming through. Indeed, it was, so this is positive news. We reconnected the line and then started the car, but it didn't work, so at this point we loosened the fuel lines. distributor to the injectors and they threw up some old gunk but we can start to see there was some life here but we tried again and didn't get that close for test number three and to isolate what the problem might be on the shaft spill. gas in the intake and it started right away so now we know the injectors could be the problem so we decided to take out one of the injectors just to take a look at it and then decided that after looking at it they should all come out. so i did that and then left them all on the axles to repair them.

Well, the next day I went to Axel to see if the old injectors were clean. Happy Friday to you, what is the diagnosis of my injectors? Well, they were quite dirty, yes, they all are. nice and clean internally anyway yeah externally that's your job but as you know with the details yeah show me what the problem is here so this is the magic tool that cleans these old vintage injectors. Nice, uh, this thing is old itself, well, yeah, it's not. make a mess that's the gunk that came out of the old injectors wow wow this is a bad injector from a different job it's just gasoline just for this purpose it's just gasoline and look how this is squirting yeah it's just a straight jet that goes It's supposed to be like a shower nozzle, nice fine mist, this one is clogged and can't be repaired, now we'll put one of the nice clean ones in there, so this one is from my 450.

Yeah, yeah, that's a crazy, no joke, yeah, look at the difference and see how. it holds, yes, yes, it holds the pressure and then emits it, it gets to where it needs it to go at just over four, that's when it opens, look how fine the mist is, yes, it sounds a little squeaky in there, yes, yes, everything good, completely new, renovated. injectors, yeah if I were you I would clean them a little bit externally, no big deal but it's like brake cleaner, a little bit of wire brush brake cleaner, yeah man thanks you're welcome with the washed injectors in hand, I heard.

I went back to the shop to clean the exterior with a wire brush, then reinstall them and reconnect the fuel lines, but making sure not to cross them in the process to be extra sure I did everything correctly. I asked Axel to come and check my work before we gave him his first crank with the clean ejector, there he is, what's going on boss, it's like you're making progress, Larry, yeah, I'm all. I'm double checking, okay, but I wanted the teacher's blessing, any problem. Putting the injectors on or you put them on very well, nice and well, this one here was a little more challenging for some reason just just the bolt, buteverything went in.

I did what you said, which I didn't like, uh. take them off on the way in or you know, be aggressive, so turn it on, turn it on and see how it goes, yeah, come on, it's exciting, cross your fingers, nice, eh, yeah man, clean the injectors, put them back in, she started off Immediate, life is good, yes. Well, number one, it's hot and I went down the island a little bit, yeah, it seems to sound better. Okay, that was amazing. The injectors were the problem. We fix them. The car looks amazing. It works very well.

I have to ask: are you interested in taking it? your home indeed, so what are you looking for? I would like to. I think 11 to 12 is probably the high end market. I'm ordering 10 as it is right now. Thinking well, considering the paint looks good, it has some rust here and there on the interior. it's good I'm sure tires expire so yeah they're past so you're going to need new shoes yeah and we don't know about brakes. I would consider eight eight thousand. I'm not even going to argue with you. 8000 for all your help you are a good man and he is going to a new home good home I am very excited and plus I can get to see it because it is right down the street so it is absolutely fine man this is amazing it is working in yellow, well guys, there you have it.

After two days, I traded in the Mercedes for eight thousand dollars, leaving me three thousand dollars in profit. Could not be happier. Plus, it's going to be a great house, as you'll see right there in next week's episode. I'm working on a 1994 Toyota Supra and it's right hand drive, you won't want to miss this one. I'll see you next time. Alright