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Old 08-08-2009, 10:19 PM
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Sev Sev is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2007
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W126 Footrests on W123 (Epic dye color-change FAIL)

Yeah, so now that I found out there's a lot of things retrofittable from other chassis onto my 'new' 300dt I scored, I'm going all out and test fitting things. For example I just retrofitted a w201 steering wheel, and a w126 fire extinguisher.

My next task was to retrofit the w126 foot rests, normally found on 560sel and also 500sel (I believe), into my w123, just to do it. Only problem is, I wasn't able to find a blue one. So naturally, I took the dirtiest pair of footrests I had in stock, disassembled the fabric from the foam, and washed them in my sink, and then proceeded to dye them using Rit fabric dye.

After using a hair dryer to take off all the peices of foam from the fabric (which is essentially the same material as used on the floor carpet of post-update w126 and w201/w124 without the spongy foam, I soaked the fabric in my sink with hot water and dye for a good hour, then rinsed them with cold water until no more blue dye came out.

Unfortunately the dye said 'Navy Blue'--what came out was more like bright purple. It's still blue compared to my purple trash can, but not quite a match for my w123's blue interior. Whatever though, it was an experiment that only cost me $5 for some dye plus as much water and heat used in the process.





w123 Footrest FAQ:

question: do w123 rear seats have enough leg room to necessitate foot rests?
answer: no

question: so why'd you do it?
answer: lazy summer afternoon and was hanging out with my dad with nothing better to do, so we did a joint project on the Benz.
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