W124 crash repair – disassembly and rear window rust

With all the parts procured, my 300TE went into the body shop.    The repair started out as routine, removal of the old bumper and disassembly.   However, things quickly went sideways with the removal of the rear windows.

While I was aware of the rust traps in the S124 rear window design, I wasn’t prepared for how bad the rust would be would be without any real external evidence.  I’m really glad I did this repair now, as while it was bad, it was still very much repairable.

Both sides were pretty bad with one slightly worse.   The challenge is that if any water gets under the seal, there is nowhere for it to go.   It sits and rusts away the metal under the seal.  The low point seems to be at the front of the aperture, although there was some rusting at the rear.

Fixing the rust was going to be more effort than I had planned, but at l was getting it repaired all at once.  It would have been quite a shame to fix one side only.

Preparing the roof for paint was more effort than I had hoped.  The strips on the roof are just attached with adhesive.  But the actual roof racks require the headlining to come down.  Seeing the strips off the roof showed how badly the paint had faded from original, the main reason why I was having the roof repainted.