Couldn’t handle the flaky, stone chipped white grille on the 190E. No good before photos because I never think of them until it is too late.
Tried the “aqua blaster” (wet bead blaster), trying to avoid chewing the plastic too hard.
It worked pretty well.
But the corners were impossible to get clean.
Then I tried with the normal/dry blaster.
Better. Faster, gets more of the nooks and crevices clean.
But not all of them. There’s actually a ton of surface area and you need to rotate the grille to four different orientations (45*, 135*, 225* and 315*) to even see all of the paint, and then repeat on the other side.
Luckily, the seal pick chips the paint out pretty easily.
Bearing in mind that a new grille and surround is about $160 on ebay, I think that there’s about 6 hours work in this one…
At this point, I think that I will leave the surround in stone-chipped white and repaint the aluminium trims in white, and reassemble it. If I make the rest of the car pretty, then I will buy a new grille.
