I personally do not care for spacers for these cars. That being said, a have a set of 4 H&R 20mm DRA spacers. I used them once and did not like them.
You are already in a bit of a pickle with a set of 21 ET and 35 ET rims. That changes the tracking. Your 21 ET is a bit much for the on the front anyway and will need a lot of adjusting to make them work.
35's are OK an good for the front but you can not correct for the 21 ET.

the 21's in the rear may even rub depending on tire size especially with weight in the trunk.

I would really not advise trying to make these rims work. Too much trouble, but it seems you just bought michelin tires for them. Can you remind us what tire size did you fit?

 

On the pinstripe front, like 190Efan mentioned my pin stripes are the same color as the interior palomino. Barely noticeable and a nice touch but they have fallen victim to over polishing a red car over 34 years.
Like you say I can probably tape and polish them off gently. I will try a small section.

Seems someone tried to repair your pin stipes and I agree they may not have been originally done at the dealership. I had not seen a two tone like yours. For a black interior one maybe just an orange stripe would look good. But tastes differ.

PDR is the way to go. You might even decide not to paint the car after that. I did mine 3-4 years back and I probably had 20-30 door dings from years of usage. They almost came out perfectly. You should take your door cards off yourself, don't trust the PDR guy, he is not going to know your car like you do and will mess up the cards.

 

On the judging event on these car shows for preservation class 190Efan, you seem to have experience but in this one event out here that I attended it appeared to me they cared about 2 items:

(1) Does the car look like it was in the showroom on day one
(2) Is the car somewhat rare

Notice that I did not mention ownership. They did not care that I was the original owner. Actually of the 3 trophy cars in my preservation class and the 2 cars in the Sacco class (I do not remember the 3rd Sacco) all 5/5 had less than 1 year ownership, I know because I talked to all 5. I did not converse with the second place Sacco. Sacco 1st place was a 87 Cosworth (no surprize) and 3rd place was a 93 Sportline, both black. Oh and they do not seem to like red cars. I got that feeling. My car probably would have done better in the Sacco class but in my opinion not worth a prize because of the shortcomings I mentioned earlier. BTW the other Sacco cars were not perfect either, plenty of flaws but they are rare cars, that is a big plus.

 

I let one guy quote me for PDR and he wanted to Bondo and repaint the entire lower half of the doors, HELL NO!!! I actually got mad talking to him about that lol bondo on my old Nissans never once turned out good and that’s overkill for the damage I have.

I have 185/65/15 all around….these are the same wheels and tire size that were on the car when I got it in 2019. I do know it was driven from 97k to 112k miles with these wheels before never leaving garage

Bummer, but I mean worst case I slap these new tires onto my OE gullies

I haven’t had any evidence of rubbing in the rear after all this time and atleast one side of the car had each of the offset sizes on it.

i only carry my bag of tools and extra fluids, my trunk is usually clear and I treat my car like a 2 seater when it comes to passengers

 

Ok, 185/65/15 with the 21ET will work in the rear as you have evidenced. For the fronts they will only work if you push out the fender and center the wheel. May even have to center the bumper for the molding clearance but you should never rotate those to the front. These cars with the proper alignment do not need tire rotation and both rears and front will wear out pretty evenly. I never rotated tires in 34 years.

Yeah your PDR guy is not 100% PDR. Any PDR person that even mentions bondo is just a painter who has a couple of PDR tools. A tru PDR person will refer you to a body shop if they think they can not fix a dent.

When I got mine done I marked all dings with tape and asked him to fix all those that are marked.

The only issue with PDR is you have to remove the nylon humidity barrier for the doors. In my case a couple were already ripped so I made my own nylon to replace them and used double sided thin 3M tape to install them. You can also buy the already made replacement nylon at the dealership. Had I known this I would have just bought them there, a lot less work.

 

You're spot on as far as the MBCA judges looking for the car to look like it did the day it left the MB factory. I think the thinking is the idea of brand preservation through looking for the cars to be as they originally left the MB factory so that a record of that is kept. I personally think that there's room for everyone. There does seem to be an effort by MBCA to expand the types of classes with less harsh judging in order to make room for more owners to show their cars. There will always be the concours level, hardly driven cars but there's also cars that are driven on a regular basis that are well maintained but not concours level who should also be able to participate, inmho. There is now a class for owners who choose to modify their MBs. How that particular class is judged, I have no clue. I think rarity helps but I'm not entirely sure that it's the only factor. It's supposed to be based on the point totals for each car. I will say that my car did beat an EVO I for the class win at the former Starfest in the show class at that particular concours. I was pretty shocked because I didn't think my car had a chance against an EVO. At Legends, my car won the class but a 16v won best of show. The 16v scored about 1 point higher than my car. It had only 34,000 miles on it which I think is probably 1 of the lowest mileage 16vs in the world. It was a beautiful, all original 16v and I met and liked the owner who was super nice.1 of my deductions at both MBCA concours I've entered was for the pinstripe despite the fact that pinstriping is very common for U.S. market MBs from that era. I don't know so much about the color issue. There's no deduction for color unless the color on the car isn't the color that the car originally left the MB factory with. I don't think color should be an issue if it's the original color. I think it should only be about the condition of the car and not about the color of the car. I happen to like W201s in red. I considered getting red until I saw the midnight blue with the palomino interior at which point my color debate was all over. I did like getting my judging papers so I knew where my car had been marked down so I could correct it for the next time. I like your idea of crediting original ownership. I'm the original owner of my car as well. Such long term MB ownership is not unheard of but it's pretty rare, I think especially for W201s. I also think long term ownership should be rewarded. We each can only go by the experiences we've had with having our cars judged. I think both sets of experiences matter. I think you're to be commended for putting your car out there. I would suggest to not get discouraged and take a look at the new classes that've been added that look to me like the judging for those classes will be so brutal. Hopefully they'll be in place for next year's Legends.

 

You need to find someone who only does the PDR. Bondo isn't necessary and doesn't look as good as PDR for the type of dents you're dealing with I also think you would do well to follow Dolucassi's advise on your wheels and tires since he is an engineer. Your car was never designed for the wheels and tires you're trying to force fit onto it. You're making things way over complicated and not the best from a safety standpoint. MB compensated for the extra weight of the engine with the different tire pressures for the front tires vs the rear tires, 29lbs for the front tires and 34lbs for the rear tires. That's really all you need to do. It would be much safer for you to go back to your original wheels and size your tires accordingly. My engineer father was never one to modify wheel and tire sizes to a setup that the car was never designed for. He was also a stickler for rotating tires on a regular basis, typically every 7,500 miles. That advise has always held me in good stead with my cars.

 

Thanks for the advice on PDR 190efan and will do! but please read my entire post, I did not change anything wheel related on my car and I’m not trying to force anything.

I have the same wheels on the car as before I owned it. These are decisions I did not make myself but the PO and very long ago

The tires I bought will also fit my stock wheels as they are the stock size, I will likely go back to those in near future.

The front wheels with 35mm offset should not rub with spacer or a 55 tire but like you both said it is too much work to do all that. They only rubbed before if I hit the bottom of an decline too fast, never when turning

 

Sorry but I got the impression from your previous posts that this was a setup you wanted to install. I still think it's a setup that has the potential to jeopardize your safety. For your safety, you're much better off getting your car back to the way it was when the MB engineers designed and it left the factory.

 

Lots of good commentary in this thread, especially about those pinstripes!
I've heard the same about the pinstripe painter in the SF Bay Area, my friend that manages a collision/auto shop mentioned that he knew of that guy. Seems like they did them primarily at South Bay/Peninsula dealers. My car was Oakland delivered, and from what I've seen of other SF/Oakland Benz cars, none seem to have pinstripes, since both dealers were same owner.
Couple years ago I brought him another friend's W124 E320 that had been sideswiped. This car is spruce green w/ gold pinstripe. Since they had to repaint both doors, my friend wanted the pinstripe put back, so they were re-done in an almost identical vinyl.
Another friend has a 400E with the model number painted into the pinstripe on the rear quarter panels.

 

Indeed 355, this artists initials were YS or at least he signed with these letters. This is actually how I found out how he did the striping. A body shop owner saw my car a few years back and immediately noticed the signature. He is the one who mentioned YS charges $1500 back then for freehand pinstriping. Whatever prep and paint he did, the striping is not coming off easily with tape and hand polish. It is pretty well baked in.

 

Try a compound if you’re not ready to give up dolucasi. It should be much more abrasive than regular polish. I am not a paint expert of course but these are my observations from experimenting on previous cars.

If it does come off you want to polish and wax the same area after

 

Back in the day, the pinstriping was really common in my part of the country for W201s, W124s, W126s W123s, W116s and R107s. It was unusual to see one of those cars without it. Even with the rare examples I see today, most of them still have the pinstriping. My car doesn't have anyone's initials on the pinstriping on it. I guess that must've varied depending on who was actually doing the pinstriping. Given that the pinstriping was so common when our cars were new is why I object to MBCA concours rules deducting for it. An unfair deduction if ever there was one.

 

MBCA concours works in mysterious ways indeed. Deductions for having pinstriping is absurd. Deductions for not having a washer agent in the windshield wiper reservoir, is in a class by itself.
Seems some of the deductions are left to the judge. Let's say they are judging a Cossworth 2.5L at 5K miles in showroom condition. Are they really going to deduct for plain water in reservoir? I think not.

 

The deductions aren't left entirely solely to the judges. They go by the deductions that are on the MBCA judges scoring sheets that you can view and print at the MBCA website. You can also request a copy of your scoring sheets for Legends. The 2 times I've showed my car at an MBCA concours, I've requested my judging sheets and I found it very helpful to review so I know what needs improvement if I ever decide to have my car judged again. The judges are essentially looking for the car to be the way it was when it left the MB factory so water in the windshield wiper reservoir instead of windshield washer fluid in the reservoir would likely be a deduction. To say that the MBCA judges are strict is an understatement. I've actually heard horror stories about the judges wearing white gloves and running a finger across a part of the car to see if there's any dirt on the white glove and then deducting for the dirt. I've actually never personally witnessed this but I have heard these horror stories.

 

Of all the 190E's I have seen in my travels I have yet to see one with pin stripping. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough? Most have been taxis in Europe though. I wouldn't be surprised if the judges deduct for washer fluid that is the wrong colour.

 

The pinstriping was a U.S. market thing.