Sam87

Hello everyone,



New member on this site but not new to car forums.
Even though i registered long time ago i haven't made any post until now so i guess i still count as new

This is going to be a LONG post!!!

I recently bought my first van.... I was going to buy a Vauxhall vivaro but after seeing a few that were described as mint, they turned out to be completely the opposite of that!
Now out of all people, it was my mother that suggested I looked at Mercedes vans . It hadn't crossed my mind about Mercedes vans even though I've only ever had German cars (few Mercedes also).
So I started looking at vitos and remembered that they also made a v6 model! Of course once I remembered that I could get a v6 van it was decided to go for a vito.
I started looking but I didn't want a vito any colour. For my business I wanted something that would stand out a bit from the rest of the vans. I wanted blue or red.
First choice was blue and I found one.
The van seemed in good condition. It drove nice and pulled very hard! The engine alone sold it to me .
We agreed on a price and the next day I went and collected the van.

Now I wanted to make the van stand out a little bit and I mean a little bit but of course as always when you browse car/van forums you get ideas and in my case if I like something I have to go ahead and do it.
At first I thought I'd get the front end painted as the bonnet, bumper had some stone chips and there was a dent at the bottom of the tail gate and rear bumper had a scratch.
The paint was shocking! I've never seen a car with sooo many swirls, plus all the signs that it had before you could still see

As I was browsing the forum I found out you could do a facelift conversion! I liked that so I thought I'd just look on eBay and see "if" i could find the parts. At this point it was a big "IF" but I found facelift headlamps and made an offer. The guy excepted the offer and there was no going back now

I then found the facelift wings
Ordered the wiring for the headlamps from Germany (got the link from here) thank you!
Plastic inner arches
Viano front grill
Viano front bumper.
Now as for the bumper, I wanted the bumper that has the chrome bits on the sides as I read it's quite rare to have this bumper. I also found a pic of a brabus viano that had the same bumper with the chrome bits but with a brabus front splitter blended in not like the usual brabus front bumper that have a part stuck on.... I like that but it's not what I wanted. I wanted something that is all one piece and not something just stuck on

I found the bumper that I wanted but the chrome bits that go on the side of the bumper were missing. I thought it's fine they'll probably cost something like £50..... how wrong was I!!! £175+ later from Mercedes I had 2 chrome bits that are not even real chrome but plastic! Rip off or what! Anyways I needed them so had to pay the price.

Luckily I also found the front brabus splitter that I needed, bought that too.
It wasn't an easy simple fit as you'll see from the pics but the guys at the body shop done a really good job.

As for wheels I wanted brabus wheels and I wanted 20s as I had some genuine brabus 20s few years ago for my w211 e class.... I found the same wheels that i had before but they were in a bad state. I love this style of wheels and I went ahead and bought them. I had the face of the wheels and the lip polished.... done it myself.... not a job i recommend anyone to do
I ordered 4 tyres but later I got another 2 as I wanted to try different size tyres to see which ones looked better.
Opinions wanted what you think looks best

A rear spoiler was ordered.

Side steps
Chrome mirror covers
Chrome door handles
Chrome tail gate Handel
Chrome tail gate trim
Rear bumper chrome protected
Leather trim for the steering wheel was ordered also.
Led number plate lights
Led side lights
Chrome indicator bulbs
Custom leather seat covers (waiting to arrive)
Eibach springs


Once everything was fitted the van looked a bit to high. I decided to go for eibach springs as I didn't want to ruin the ride or lower the van too much as I'm tired of very low cars. It drives beautiful now and it doesn't feel like a boat like they normally do when going around corners.

The van had no rust anywhere which is great as I'm sure you guys know how much they can rust.
It has some nice options...
Sat nav
Parking sensors front and rear
Cruise control
And for the first time ever, I love the fact that it's an auto. Always been a manual guy
If you've read all this, that's great, if not, I understand as I did write quite a bit

I will post some pics now, some before, during and after

Here's the van after it's first wash and how it looked when i first got it....







The paint on the van before i had it detailed







Wet and dry in some areas

BEFORE




AFTER




This is the brabus bumper that I saw


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I also bought a private plate for the van.... my friends say, Sam when it comes to your cars, you have OCD.... everything has to be mint in your cars and even though they say it as a joke it's kind of true so I thought this plate will make people laugh but at the same time I probably have a bit of OCD when it comes to my cars

The guys at the body shop having fun fitting the lower brabus splitter











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Black primer was used for the front end so when in the future the van gets stone chips they wont stand out as much as if it had grey primer


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Wheels when i got them









After






The day came to fit all the parts.... Having a friend that lets you have access to a garage for as long as we needed was nice
















The arches, suspension, lower arms, exhaust, underneath and other parts were cleaned and painted





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Here it is all done




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Sam87

As it's a Mercedes forum I thought you might like to see some pics of 2 of my clks but unfortunately I had to sell them both due to loosing my storage space

The dark blue one was a clk320 with 18k on the clock

The light blue one had 20k on the clock.
Quite rare to find such low mileage cars.
I've always had a thing about low mileage cars.

I only have one pic of the dark blue one in this lap top, I'll get some more pics from the other computer when I get a chance. It really was like new!
Sorry for the poor quality pic, it's the only one I have at the moment.




This is the clk230k with 20k on the clock. I went a bit crazy with the cleaning on this car too
















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I want to buy an e55k w211 but finding one that I like is not easy. I missed out on one few years ago . To this day I still get upset when I think about it as it was a designo model.... the colour was like purple/dark blue with champagne leather seats. Never seen another one like that. It only had 64k on the clock too. I wish I had bought that but had no where to park it. If another one like that comes up or someone know one like that please let me know as I'll be interested in buying it.

Sam87

This is my pride and joy, E46 M3 that i've had for about 9 years now.... I bought this car with 20k on the clock.... Now it has 27k on the clock and i'm the second owner
It used to be oem for about 2 years and then i was bored so i decided to modify the car...... Now i'm thinking of putting the car back to oem and when i say oem i mean just like the day it left the factory.
I've bought a set of brand new original M3 wheels.... It's so rare to see and e46 with original wheels now days as most of them have been diamond cut, painted or polished as no one can do the factory finish on this wheels.

This is how it used to look






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I then done all the mods within a month
Custom front bumper.... front splitter blended in
Custom rear bumper... CSL rear diffuser blended in
ACS boot spoiler blended in
Lowered on coilovers
polished oem 19's [square setup]
Big brake kit
Euro tips
Wrapped in aluminuim grey 3m
Inside
Custom steering wheels
Imola red gaiters
Imola red arm rest
Acs pedals M3 floor mats
Black front and side grills
Colour coded front grills [outer trims]
Tinted front indicators
I think that's all the mods

This is how the car looks now




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I also bought a cl500 about 3 months ago and I've been restoring the car to as new condition as possible but I'll make another thread for that car.

I think this is enough writing for the first post on this site
Looking forward to seeing other people's projects

astamir

you did some great job there mate restoring all those cars to the oem condition. I bought a 2004 viano with 3.2 m112 engine with 81k on the clock will be keeping that as a family car so I might need a help with advises and sources of parts ))