So, you spend $108K on a ML63. How can you be so silly to expect the clear coat not to peel off of the window trim? And furthermore, how can you be so silly to expect Mercedes to take care of you and be embarrassed of their quality? Cue the church escape scene from The Graduate: "We have his money! Start the car, start the car."

The bottom window trim on the 4 doors comes off with a 3" and a 1" set of blue plastic bodywork pry tools from Harbor Freight. You insert the wide one underneath one end towards the center door frame pillar and you squeeze the narrow one in from the top and pry out a little. Take your time. Once that end lifts less than 1/4", walk the wide tool further along the bottom while you gently pull up close to the tool. At the very end, you slide the trim towards your rather than pulling up. It is a little scary but takes 10 minutes for all 4. The trim is plastic, not metal. There is a pretty good youtube video on this and a bunch of useless ones. one
You put each trim piece in turn on a flat supported, well lit surface. You take a thin 4-5" box cutter blade out of a 2 for $1 box cutter from the dollar store, and you scrape with the long sharp edge at a very shallow angle. 90% of the clear coat will come off in minutes. You get boiling water and wet sections for the rest because the clear coat comes off with water!! Being of inferior quality, it will scrape right off. Do not cut yourself. Do not cut such that you will hit yourself when the blade periodically slips towards you as you scrape towards yourself.

Let it dry. Cover the rubber trim with masking tape. The original product development meeting: "It is so cool, we can clear coat directly on the black plastic and it will last the lesser of 20 years and 30 months."

Gently sand the plastic to 1. get any residual clear coat off, 2. smooth out any blade marks, 3. rough the surface up a little. I used 800 grit. You could start with 120-200 grit and work your way up. Get rid of the dust with a tack cloth.

3 coats of adhesion promoter for automotive plastic; $8 a can. 2-3 coats of original Mercedes OEM color spray paint; $25 a spray can; 3 coats of Mercedes clear coat; $25. Heat the cans to ~90 degrees in a water bath and shake well before use. 3 minutes between clear coats; wait 10 min, 7 minutes between paint coasts, wait 15 minutes; 7 minutes between clear coats. 70 degrees or warmer ambient temperature. The fumes are BAD for you. Dust and wind is death. Use same procedure for headlight washer covers and the incredibly cheap looking hood inserts. Place the trim against a board near vertically. Spray from ~8-10 inches away.

A shout out to Mercedes' heads of quality and cost reduction. Who knew you could play golf with a tennis racket?

 

So,your car is what, 8 years old?

Both my stepdaughter and I have 2007 GLs and hers is usually out doors and mine is usually garaged and has only 85k miles in almost 14 years. Her black window trim peeled, mine didn’t and looks like new. I took mine off and installed it on hers and installed new stainless trim on mine.

But, I suppose it makes you feel good to complain. It’s not impressive.