Hi, As the title says I'm going to look at a 50 Merc in the morning. What should I be looking for or asking about? The car is supposed to be all original. 255, 3 speed etc. I will be checking out the rockers and all the bottom areas of the car as I would any. Is there any place the rust out like wheel wells, door bottoms etc..? Im hoping this car is going to be my solid drive around car to get me and the family to rod runs while i toil away on my 35 ford 5 window (replace floors and all the other rust it has in it). Thanks in advance Aaron.
Inner and outer rockers, door bottoms. Lower front corners (if quarter window seals allowed water in. Rear window glass lip, drip rails, rear pan. Also typically lower/rear front fender corner (though easy fix)
My '51 has real nice skins but the floors are toast as are the inner rockers, floor braces, and the bottom corners of the cowl. Surprisingly little is reproduced for replacement panels for these cars, the floors, rockers, and inners that are sold seem to be a very poor fit (although they are cheap). A nice complete running car is getting to be tough to find, and even the 4 doors have a strong following and aren't cheap anymore. Be sure to post pics, curious to see what you've found.
Old body man told me once to always check the left side more carefully than the right side. His theory was that the splash from oncoming cars on dirt roads rusted the left sides quicker. That's why he said I'd always find more NOS RH stuff than left. That was back when I could find NOS sheetmetal for 49-51 Mercs.
This is the car. Looks good from a distance. A little to much rust for me, while we live in a rental at the moment. Not something I could get in and drive with the kids in.
Sure looks good and complete at 20 feet. Is it relatively mechanically sound to the point that you could drive as is/enjoy for the season until you're out of the rental-or the price point where you could afford to farm out the rust to a shop for a couple of weeks w/o going over budget? Can't be too many 49-51 Mercs to choose from down under?
Where was it rusty? Looks really clean to me, although I know how the outsides of these things can look real nice and the underside can be wasted, from personal experience. Any more pictures? Also curious, how much does one of these things go for in Australia?
Being in Aus. you don't have the anti 4dr mind set as we do here in the U.S.. Here, 4dr.'s go much cheaper than a 2dr.. Looks good from the picture but if you seen a lot of rust than keep looking.
Yeah I couldn't get right under it but I could feel the the b pillar was just sitting unattached to the frame. Holes in the trunk floor. Passenger side rear wheel arch was toast. Could get it to turn over. So unsure. I was pretty annoyed cause they said rust free. Now I didn't think that was going to be the case. Just not that bad. I'm going to ring a few places to get a ball park on rust replacement. But I think I'm going to pass. It was so complete.
That's too bad. It's certainly a pretty car, but if your intent is to buy a driver to focus your efforts on a long term project, this one probably isn't it, hate to have two big projects and none to run, unless the price is so great you could just take it somewhere and have it fixed.
That's about 19K US, seems very high for one with a lot of rust although I'm sure they're much harder to find there than here.
I guess they're trying to recoup some of the cost associated with bringing it in. I can't remember ever seeing a 4 door in Australia. I missed a really good looking 2 door a lot more expensive just last week. Oh well the search continues.