snovvman

Thanks for the great photos. Does the OE's quality appear obviously better?

I tend to agree. I was puzzled by the posts I found suggesting that the aftermarket plates don't work, but after reading a few, I believed them.

If anyone has successfully used an aftermarket grille w/ Distronic, please chime in. Thanks.

wywywywy

I don't want to make guesses, I can only say that I tried it and it didn't work for me at all. And I had to sell it then buy a genuine one which worked perfectly straight away.

No it's not obvious.

snovvman

Thank you. It is very strange that the that Distronic did not work with the aftermarket grille. That silicon dot is a curious difference...

SwineHund550

Just for the hell of it I looked to see if mine had the round thingy and it did not.

S500 Man

Im having the same problem...i did the facelift and now my distronic does not work wih A/M grille from Gary...im going to try getting OEM😣

phatisfy

Replace with an OEM plate and you should be good! The AM plate is too thick for the sensor to pass through.

subterFUSE

Sorry to revive an old thread, but this is a topic I'm trying to learn more about and I felt it better not to start a new thread.


If you have a W221 S63 with Distronic, and want to get a black grill... what is the correct way to go about it while keeping the OEM Distronic fully functional?

Do we just have to get the OEM grill painted?

Or is there anyplace that sells black grills with the correct Distronic-compatible parts?

Chris The Swede

I have a aftermarket grill that I have used on both my S500 and my S65 and they work perfectly with NO ERRORS ever.... So there sure is a AM version that works...

Dnasty

Sorry for reviving this old thread but I just purchased a w207 e550 coupe 2010 and I purchased an aftermarket grill that said "compatible with distronic".... The plate on this car is a little different from your s class style but I believe it does the same thing. It is the giant flat "2d" mercedes painted star in a circle. I looked at both oem and aftermarket plates and they both appear to be the same thickness but the aftermarket one I bought has a raised black painted star ontop of the flat plate. The look is much better then stock but I am not sure if it is distorting the distronic. I don't get any errors right away but I took it on the freeway for some spirited driving and notice that I was getting errors when changing lanes from an occupied lane to an open one. I also had some seatbelt tightenings occur. I am not sure if this is the distronic working properly or not. I ran the cruise control for a while and it worked perfectly with braking etc. Just the few instances of lane changes. I also used the park assist function which I think works with distronic and that worked fine as well also. Is this distronic or is my driving just too "spirited". Also threw the warning at a redlight that I was approaching at a somewhat fast speed. Are these all normal things for distronic?