Bentley S1 Graber Mercedes 540k special

Bentley S1 Graber Mercedes 540k special

I was approached in 2017 by a gentleman who wanted me to quote for this project.

his plan was to purchase a running driving  Bentley S1 and build a Mercedes style 540k body, the client is a skilled engineer and has an excellent grasp of drawings and measurements.

he did all his research and went over both cars measurements and found that the wheel plan was almost identical however the Mercedes was 4” longer.

The client purchased this very clean looking and what appeared to be well maintained 1956 Bentley S 1.

The vehicle was delivered to our workshop and was put into storage whilst our workshops construction was completed.

Our client then began looking at purchasing an all  steel replica Mercedes 540k from Lithuania 🇱🇹, there is a firm over there that produces a very good replica but with all the rough edges.

Our client delivered this bodyshell with integral chassis rails and the original idea was to build the Bentley S1 into this body.

our next move was to strip the Bentley S1 and retain everything for this build.

Then we took the chassis for shotblasting and etch priming.

Shotblasting revealed two minor points of repair work needed to be done to the rear of the chassis.

We then decided to place the fabricated body onto the stripped chassis to check dimensions.

After some deliberation and talking into consideration how poorly presented the fabricated body was I decided we would start from scratch and build a new body constructed from ash.

so some considerable time was spent patterning up the fabricated body.

Ten year seasoned ash.

The bulk head is where we began as our datum point, because of the 4” length difference in the Bentley chassis we decided that instead of cutting the chassis and adding the extra length we would infact remove 1-1/2 inch out of the doors and 2-1/2 out of the bulkhead depth.

we then began mounting a rear wing to see if we had the room and heights correct.

This is an original 540k body recently for sale.

Bulkhead loop and B posts.

B post mounts

S

We had to add approximately 3” to the Mk6 bulkhead to give it some depth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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