Persian Kity is by far our lightest working vehicle and is a true preservation rather than full restoration example. This is an older article that I drafted for the Persian Kitty’s restoration. It was supposed to follow the Impression: Acquisition of Persian Kitty, but I just found it in drafts folder. I noticed I start forgetting what I did, so it’s necessary to write down before they all gone.
Persian Kitty brought by a trailer in a few days after the acquisition. I inspected the car and took some pre-job photos. I refrained from doing anything before it’s home, including enduring the S 55 AMG badge on the trunk lid, because recording before & after is also important.
I had the car inspected thoroughly for the first time – the DMV consumed all my time budget and I paid all the money based on my feeling. I’ve seen over 50,000 140 listings, so my eyes are relatively trustworthy. A considerable part of the paint is original, which is very unusual in China where labor costs are low. You can say that the Iranian Embassy isn’t weathly, obviously most people cannot stand this paint situation. There are probably hundreds of small pits due to careless usage. Such abuse occurs when your car is paid by the taxpayer and taxpayer never saw it. I originally planned to keep the original paint, but I quickly gave up on that idea. Overall, the condition of Persian Kitty is about 8/10, so I was right. Today most 140s in Chinese users’ hand are only between 5/10 and 6/10. The usage environment here is harsh, poor fuel, bad weather, congested traffic. And embassy vehicles get the best fuel, garages, don’t follow the traffic lights (much less idle), usually diplomatic cars are very much in demand, but they always end up in the junkyard rather than the hands of Chinese citizens, although in the 90s most countries used 140 as ambassadors cars, only a few survive today. The Persian Kitty is defined as a Preservation rather than a Restoration project, with the goal of ensuring complete mechanical operation and decent appearance. I’m not going for the ultimate look because I plan on using it and sooner or later it’s going to get some wear and tear.
The first thing is to remove the sunscreen film. Since I was still pressed for time, I wanted to leave these “any shop could do” things to any shop, however I soon discovered that some shops were making insulting offers. It’s been too long since I’ve been around a repair shop and COVID has made some people decide to start looting. Eventually I found my locksmith to take care of the matter and we completed the job together. This incident is worth highlighting because it changed my attitude towards not being able to easily delegate work, even the simplest tasks, to others. He’s wondering why I removed the S 55 AMG badge and put the S 280 badge on.
Then I removed everything from the interior to do the cleaning. What a disaster, the interior seems to have never been cleaned and the people riding in it don’t care. You can totally trust velour anyway, except for a slight smoke burn it’s flawless. Velour is a challenge for people’s class. In terms of cost, it is between cloth and leather, not the most expensive. But it requires the cleanest possible use, as velour never misses an opportunity to absorb dirt, thus you need to maintain the environment by keeping yourself and everyone in your vehicle clean at all times. Thankfully even it dirts 23 years, all the dirt can still be pulled out, which is a huge advantage of velour.
Why isn’t it delivered to my own shop? Since everyone is busy restoring my 1998 S 320 Bianca, it has missed multiple DMV required MOTs due to COVID delays and if it misses the last window it will be written off by the DMV forever. So Persin Kitty’s restoration principle is simple: I do it myself. Well, at this point it’s far from how I described it to my wife, this car isn’t a money pit, but it needs a lot of love before I can invite my wife in for a ride.
During the floormat cleaning I discovered that some part of the gray carpet was permanently stained by some red powder, I tried to clean it completely but was unable to do so, luckily the stubborn stains only existed under the seats. I broke down the seat and looked to see where the powder was coming from, it’s the adhesive on the inside of the velor, on leather seats you don’t need to worry about this, but on velor seats they keep falling out of the gaps. I decided to completely clean the back of the seat cover and vacuum out all the red powder. It was really red and I couldn’t imagine how much trouble it would be if it wasn’t cleaned up.
The same problem occurs with the C-pillar trim, which also exists on cars with leather upholstery. I wanted to keep all the original fabric, so I had a hard time cleaning the velvet that was stained with red powder. To ensure that the remade trim would have a similar texture, meaning some cushioning and thickness, I examined both original sponges and looked for alternatives. They were restored to look and feel as good as I could imagine them to be as new as the originals.
Almost all 140s offer lumbar support, and even on the manual seats, they provide one for free to the driver. This was good news when the car was new, but it’s extra maintenance now. Regardless of whether you use this feature or not, after more than 20 years they become pancakes. I took a new airbag out of stock and installed it, maybe I will never use this feature, but now that I see it, fine.
I start looking for replacement of all the damaged interior parts, Persian Kitty was unusual with manual seats which has flimsy side covers. Almost all China-spec 140’s are power seats, there are no used parts available, same as US. As for the MB, they don’t have stock in matching color either, I found NOS passenger side but the left side is only available in black. So they had to be spray painted gray. You can see that even in gray, the NOS is different from the old parts, so I spray painted a lot of gray parts to ensure consistency.
There are many similar jobs like the seats. For trimof seat rails, new trims in different colors also must be ordered and painted.
According to statistics, in just 3 years after leaving the consulate, it has experienced at least 6 car owners. The vast majority of people bought this car for profit, which is not good news for the condition. If not all of them are conscientious finders, they will silently preserve items they consider valuable as they pass through their hands. Persian Kitty is equipped with a 682 fire extinguisher located under the driver’s seat. It’s still there in the 2018 photo, but I’ve had no luck inheriting it. Maybe the flagpole, user manual, maintenance records and many other things were lost this way. I have to thank the person who removed it for putting the screws and brackets back because I can’t imagine the chance of finding them again. I found the matching gray housing and fire extinguisher separately, this fire extinguisher is no longer supplied by MB aftersales, they have new fire extinguishers but they cannot be put into the housing.
For MY1998, the velor-trimmed car had a leather front armrest – just the front. No explanation, maybe the old parts have worn out, maybe this is a generous upgrade. I prefer velvet because it cleans up better and is consistent. As I could see, the original armrests had aged badly, the dye had been corroded by sweat, and the leather had hardened. I found some old parts in good condition that were removed from a MY1994, they had a slightly different texture.
It cost a fortune to make up the missing flagpole – it was NOS purchased by Germany, but the money was mainly given to Chinese customs and their agents, but I must thank them for not rejecting my money. I went to the customs office with the Iranian flag, ready to tell them that it was ordered for the Iranian ambassador’s car. Although Iran doesn’t have many friends, but our government is one of them. Well, a retired car does not have diplomatic immunity. In the past, I would give this part to my friend Ali who works in Germany. He is Persian, works at VW and travels between China and Germany very often, but he cannot come to China now due to COVID lockdown. He was very excited about my purchase of this car, and I notify him at first. Unfortunately, he has not been to China for a long time and has not ridden in it yet.
The only small improvement: the trim near the rear air outlet will be sticky. This is because since MY1997, paint is used to cover the trim, not vinyl. So I replaced the vinyl-wrapped trim on the earlier car. The same improvement also happens on the round caps on both sides of the armrest, you have to admit that the earlier cars had better quality because the manufacturers have the goal of reducing costs every year, even Mercedes-Benz. Many changes occur that are not visible for 10 years until you notice in year 11 that the car suddenly looks older.
I shouldn’t have forgotten to mention another lustful attraction of Persian cats in my previous article. As for the wood trim, first of all it has eucalyptus wood, which is the standard wood in MY1998, but has become exotic due to the abuse of bur wood. I must state that the burl wood of late vehecles is of low quality, you can hardly feel its quality, I prefer eucalyptus. Then, its eucalyptus does not crack, which has defeated 99% of cars on the market. When I removed all the panels and polished them I discovered that the center console was actually disassembled and I have to give credit to someone who worked on this.
Persian Kitty has had minor changes in several ownerships since 2018. Most not in a positive direction, although the motivations were good. For example in the earliest listing he still had the original shifter, albeit worn out. When I took him home he already had an aftermarket wooden shifter, color and styling didn’t match. Managed to find a NOS one, this shifter is universal with W 202, W 163 etc, so there are still some in stock.
After cleaning up the interior, instead of rushing to fit everything back in, I started thinking about my next problem. Working closely I got a better understanding of the condition of the paint and came up with a plan to PDR repair hundreds of pits before painting. A shiny clear coat will help smooth out every pit, and if you sand the shine right off, it would be difficult to do an accurate PDR and more filler would be needed. I consulted many PDR shops and none of them satisfied me, then I contacted my omnipotent locksmith, a friend of his who was willing to provide door-to-door service at a reasonable price. That day the PDR master came to my warehouse with his 10 year old son to work with him, it only took one morning for them to fix everything, I remember a pro shop would have taken 15 days and a lot of money. I patted his son on the shoulder: “This is a very good profession, and you will become a master.” Frankly the job is not 100% as the sheet metal on this car is pretty bad but it has saved over 90% of the filler.
During this time I was also contacting the paint job. My shop is painting a BMW E30, and there is an R 129 behind it. I plan to outsource this work and check out what areas our painters can improve. I found a shop in Shanghai, the owner called his shop “Shanghai No. 2”. This was a joke. He meant that if he ranked second in Shanghai, it is unlikely that anyone would dare to call himself No. 1. I assumed we both know what we are doing and made an illustrated instruction sheet to show him that visually expressed the requirements for each position. I had never made these for my own employees, I just wanted the store to understand my requirements.
Surprisingly the shop owner told me “I can’t understand these, don’t send them to me” “These requirements are too official, I can’t do it, you need to find someone else”. I spent 3 hours making this illustration and describing them in Chinese characters that every Chinese person can understand, and then got a rejection from one of the best paint shops in Shanghai. He especially didn’t like the part about the sheet metal seams, and he probably misunderstood me and thought I was doing some kind of provocation. I offered to pay more but he wasn’t even interested in the money and I think I offended him unknowingly.
By the way, I had already removed all the attach parts at that point, so I decided to try adjusting the gaps myself. The gap between the hood and front fender is particularly uneven, the result of someone close the hood on the engine bay where extra items were stored. I bought a feeler gauge, adjusted only four screws, got the gap I want in about 15 minutes. The job was a lot easier than I thought, which once again proved me wrong about leaving the car in someone else’s hands, even though painting is a very generic skill.
It was August 2021 and I didn’t know what to do. I took the car into the shop and talked to my spray painter, “Can you teach me?” “Why not?” I was worried that this would upset the actual apprentices in the shop, a young man who was already in my shop for three years, and his mentor, my spray painter, was worried about his future. I told this apprentice, you are my senior, we are all apprentices, you don’t need to do anything for me.
I picked up some tools that are good for beginners, including the Festool sander, because time is important to me and these tools make me more efficient. My worst-case scenario was to push it out midway and hand it over to my painter. Then I wrote about everything about painting in <Restoration: Paintwork for Persian Kitty>. Overall, I learned a lot during this process. I made a total of 2 fatal mistakes. The first is that the sprayed varnish is too thin. Usually we spray 2 layers of varnish, but in order to pursue a lower paint film value, I only sprayed it once. The varnish was broken in some places during polishing. Even if there are no broken areas, it will not be conducive to future polishing. The second is that I polished it without waiting for the varnish to dry completely. It was a winter of minus 10 degrees Celsius, and the heating of the oven did not have much effect. I also did not park the car in the sun to dry, so the varnish appeared after I polished it. Shrinking again, no longer flat in places. Combining these 2 issues, the Persian Kitty will now only be able to maintain the blemished paint, and re-polishing will break some of the clear coat.
Painting is finally completed in March 2022, which flies by with the massive COVID lockdown. I took some photos to declare the stage victory, it’s been a year and I’ve done a lot of work, almost all of it myself, and there’s still a lot of work to do. At this time I had replaced a set of tail lights, the original ones had turned pink, and I also had a spare set of old tail lights that had some bleeding on the right side but were a much nicer color than pink.
The center mirror is a real challenge. In the 2018 photo, the Persian cat’s mirror is still intact, and when I received it the mirror had been amateurishly repaired with some kind of permanent glue, which even dripped onto the shift gate. The mirror no longer moved and a replacement had to be found. For this incorruptible diplomatic car, the rearview mirrors are fully manual, both adjustable and anti-dazzle. And all China-spec cars, from my nearest resource, come standard with electric mirrors. Same thing for the second most convenient US, I also couldn’t find any identical parts on ebay in Europe, I had to check the database to calculate my odds. What makes it even more difficult is that the mirror of MY1998 is smaller than that of all previous MYs, so it is necessary to find the same accessories in the surviving MY1998s. In MY1998, there were approximately 1,800 cars with gray interiors equipped with manual rearview mirrors, mostly in Europe. It used to be that most of these European cars had long since made their way to Eastern Europe, which is something I can’t reach. They were also found in Oman, Singapore and Australia, again I couldn’t find anything in those places. I found that 46 such cars were sold in Taiwan. Taiwan was not completely impossible for me, so I started to pay attention to Taiwan’s resources. Of course, there won’t be immediate results. When I realized I couldn’t find the mirror before the painting was done, I cobbled together a similar version from the 3 spare parts I had, it was just a bit bigger than MY1998.
A few months later I found a 1998 S 320 parting out in Taiwan. The car was blue leather. Although there were no photos to suggest it, I had the bright idea that the car with the blue interior also had a gray headliner, so the mirrors were also gray. I contacted the seller and confirmed this and purchased it. The problem was finally solved and I wasted a homemade mirror, but am still relieved.
In order to fit the S 280 badge as correctly as possible, a template was made to simulate the factory production equipment. How was the position of the numbers on the template determined? We found a 1995 S 500 trunk lid with original paint and made the template on it with the original lettering positions.
After a month of tinkering and parts shopping, I decided not to wait any longer: get the engine service done before summer arrives. The Persian Kittys gearbox was fine, but the engine was leaking badly, and this included oil, gasoline, booster fluid, coolant, every fluid known to exist. Considering this car will serve as our touring car and daily driver, all potentially faulty parts were replaced. This includes all core components such as air flow meter, generator, ignition coil, water pump, fuel pump, etc.
Maintenance on the engine stopped at the valve seals and timing chain, I didn’t remove the cylinder heads because there wasn’t enough time in the budget, and the head gasket looked fine. The new valve oil seal solves the problem of blue smoke from the exhaust pipe during cold starts in winter. This car has been in southern China for at least 13 years, where the culture is to use water instead of coolant, so the water plug in the cylinder block has severe corrosion. I was surprised that a water plug that had been rusted through and then blocked again by rust in the water relied on corrosion to repair itself.
No one knows the real mileage of the engine. In China, mileage tampering is as common as 711, and almost no 140 has actual mileage. When I purchased the Persian Kitty, it had less than 100,000 kilometers on it, which of course is not true. I found the first car dealer who took over the Persian Kitty from the Iranian Consulate in Shanghai. He reluctantly squeezed out a number, “I can’t remember, maybe 140,000.” He didn’t want to offend his peers. But at work, I think the actual mileage is over 250,000 kilometers. But since there is no definite evidence, I just adjusted the odometer from 99,000 kilometers to 140,000 kilometers. If I were able to get the exact original miles in the future, I would not hesitate to add the difference to my existing mileage.
The chassis of this car needs nothing. As a safety precaution I replaced the fuel pump and all brake hoses with a new one, and replaced the 2 rear brake discs. The only comfort change was the 4 shock absorbers. I noticed that the ground clearance of the four wheels of the car was different, so I removed the shock absorbers and found that they were all made in China replacements. These products will be listed on the label. Write “German Quality” in English. When they use Germany to describe quality rather than place of origin, it means that the quality of the product will only be the opposite of Germany. These improvements are enough, I didn’t remove the front and rear axles to check the health of the bushing because it really drives impeccably. My intention is to use the car and rebuild the chassis if necessary after it has really been put to use, maybe 100,000 km.
We completed it at the end of June 2022, and experienced several additional orders for parts. This happens when I define the car as a preservation example for local work.