The Mechanical Work.

This 1987 Mercedes 300TD S124 was in need of mechanical service. It had just ripped up the passenger side fender on a pothole while the owner was driving it, and the suspension was going to need attention considering it was originally from 1987. The car was brought to a highly rated, 4.8 star (with hundreds of reviews) Mercedes shop in Los Angeles.

The shop was told to do a pre-purchase inspection on the car: meaning to look over the car and do a thorough look at what the car is going to need for the next year of operation, and to be on the lookout for anything eye-catching as the owner wants to stay on top of any preventative maintenance.

The shop flagged that a single tie rod was worn and needed replacement, and the shocks/springs would need to be changed. When asked about the rest of the suspension, the shop suggested that all other suspension components were fine. The vehicle manager became suspicious and asked to see underneath the car to confirm this. The shop declined for him to look on the basis of insurance, and that he should believe what they were saying. The work was completed and given back to the vehicle manager.

Once the car left that Mercedes shop, the vehicle manager took it to another shop and used their lift to double-check what was going on. What he found shocked him. Not only was the other tie rod bad, but the control arm bushings had failed, all of the rear suspension bushings had failed, the differential bushings had failed, and worst of all, the ball joints rubber seals were ripped, leaving the internals bone dry, rusted, and were ready to create a severe accident.

Failed ball joints and tie rods - a severe accident waiting to happen

To give this a different context - If this 4.8 Star Mercedes shop was a fire department that was shown a burning building and asked what they would do about it, they essentially said, “We’d recommend putting out the fire on the bottom left room, but the rest of the house will be fine.”

What new balljoints and tie rods look like

What happens when a ball joint fails?

With that said, all of these components were beyond their safe levels of operation. The ball joints on this Mercedes were so dangerous, that at any given pothole, hard turn, or bump in the road, it could have popped out of its socket.

Luckily the vehicle manager did their job, and caught what could have been a severe accident.

Once this mechanical work was dialed in, it was time to begin on the fun part of the project.

Many don’t realize how easy it is to truly do a paint job correctly, and it’s in the 10’s of thousands to get it done right. Go the easy way and you’ll see why: The “old” paint here is not even a year old.

The Artwork.

sizing the artwork for print

The artwork was beautifully designed by a designer, however, it was not to scale for the vehicle. So the vehicle manager went in and had to size each of the 33 decals, sometimes having to create new pieces to make sure that they were going to be to size in the right resolution.

This included hours of work between sizing, checking the resolution, sending drafts to the print shop, and making sure that they all checked out perfectly before being printed on the extremely expensive reflective vinyl material.

Before doing so, a full draft of the sized artwork was printed in black and white, on normal paper in order to see how everything would fit.

Paper draft sizing

More sizing and placement

At this point the car was shipped across the country for a video shoot. Shops were then contacted all over that city to finalize the rest of the artwork to be printed and placed on the car, notably the hood decals and some other mechanical components that came up on a test drive of the car.