Since this car came from Texas, there was a severe problem with the adhesive on the door panels and the vinyl/leather shrinking and pulling
up. Guess Mercedes dropped the ball on this one, the adhesive they used was a very poor choice. Anyway, all four of my door panels were
showing some signs of shrinkage or the material pulling away from the
panel all together. The company that shipped the vehicle up to me cracked the windshield and lost the spare tire/ wheel, so after some negotiating, I received a nice fat check
from them (my shipping ended up costing me nothing!) and used this money
to replace the windshield and door panels..


While pictures one and
two don't really show the shrinkage, if you look around the arm rest you
can see a large area where the vinyl has shrunk. Picture two shows
the top of the panel where the material has shrunk and pulled up from the
panel. I tried repairing this several times, but the material itself
has shrunk and even heating it up and stretching it back into place did
not work. I tried three different glues, the last being a high
strength glue for exterior vinyl tops, about the most durable available.




Picture three shows the new panel from Mercedes. One thing to note,
Mercedes does not ship these panels with the cut out for power seats, you
have to cut it out yourself, seems ridiculous to me but I guess they want to cut down on
the number of stocking parts they need to maintain.
Picture four shows you a rear view and the indent where you have to cut if
you have power seats. I used a Dremel with a cutting wheel.
Picture five shows my handy work after the cutting. The last picture
is the new door panel after install. Makes the 190 look new!