TruTaing

So a couple weeks ago my car complained that my left low beam was dead, but when i checked the light was on and still has been working. Yesterday it started to flicker on and off. Now im thinking ive either got a dead bulb or a busted ballast. Searching for either results in a ridiculous number of useless threads about xenon=present. Any ideas/suggestions?

Ive got philips ultinons for bulbs - i dont THINK its the bulbs... dreading that its gonna be the ballast.

Aside from that the car is running great. haha.

phister

what you can do is switch bulbs around from left to right, if the flickering continues on that one side its most likely the ballast, thats how we figured our friends ballast went out. if its the bulb it'll flicker on the other ballast too. kinda trial and error method but works.

FrankW

just switch the right side bulb to the left and see if it works. if not then yea, it's probably the ballast.

i remember i see at least two thread about replacing ballast on the bi-xenon, but will have to search for it again.

Glyn M Ruck

Tru see here from post 53 bi-x-igniter-replacement-disassembly-diy-guide - the long way! And also the external repair kit that Benz produced later in the thread

https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...diy-guide.html

Glyn M Ruck

BTW - don't move away from your Philips Ultinons - they are the best from the Aachen plant in Germany.

TruTaing

Ouch. The igniters are pretty dang expensive... I got my whole both my headlights (way back when) for a combined 450 :x

Glyn M Ruck

Is that for the external kit?

TruTaing

Well.. Update on the BiX situation. I swapped out my ultinons for the stock bulbs and... everything worked. Im sad I paid so much for ultinons and they are already dead... Ive had them since ive roughly had the bix though, so... maybe thats the average lifespan. So luckily, no needing to get a new ballasts or igniters. I think if that were the case, I would have gone and bought some FX-R projectors and gone nuts anywho. I started looking for them on ebay and they are pretty cheap :P

Sadly, I delt w/ the bix issue and my rear sunshade now makes this terrible grinding noise after it fully retracts.... I dont use it much as I live in seattle, but its annoying. I just pulled the fuse to make sure I didnt accidently make it any worse, but Ill deal w/ this some other time when i need it :P

Small updates on the car: ~128k miles. Oil change coming. I just relubed the rear sway bar end links and added a bit to the camber arms, because those two items always seem to create lots of noise when going into the winter.

I finally managed to install my euro impact strips yesterday. The removal and installing of strips is pretty straight forward, but my hesitance has always been covering up the old bulb with electrical tape because I was worried the tape would melt or burn or something terrible would happen and the whole front end of my car would go up in flames. Ontop of that, I didnt want to have to tie wrap the bulb somewhere where some light could be visible AND have to remove the underbody trays or fender lingings to get to the bulb everytime I needed to replace it.

I intended to tie wrap the bulbs by where the stock side marker lights are now, so that regular maint would just involve removing the impact strips as opposed to fender lingings.

I taped the bulbs to hide the light. And the tape started to smoke and burn. So i spent more time looking at my painted side marker and new impact strips. I discovered that you could put the bulb back into the stock side marker and the whole reflector could fit under the new impact strips. Bulbs held in the same place, check. Light from bulb hidden, check. Best part yet. The reflector is JUST big enough to wedge into place behind the impact strip that it has no wiggle room to make noise and thus i didnt even need to use zip ties! win/win/win!

I love the look of euro impact strips. I havent seen one person w/ them in my area Hope what I found helps others w/ any hesitance to NOT get euro impact strips. Especially now that aftermarket ones can be had for so little.

Glyn M Ruck

Sorry you have not been satisfied with the Ultinons. The standard BiX & the Ultinon both come out of the Aachen plant & they have the most amazing Quality Control I've ever seen. My standard Philips BiX are 7 years old & still going strong. I wonder for how much longer.

FrankW

just use aluminum foil to cover the side marker bulbs.

maverik259

how long were you running the ultinons? I've had my for about 2 years now.

TruTaing

Current Mileage: 136,xxx

A few months ago I noticed my front suspension making nice little knocking noises while traversing rough pavement and this indicates that my sway bar end links are either loose OR the bushings on them have worn out. I got under the car and made sure everything was tight and adjusted the front H&R sway bars to the stiffer setting for summer driving, but the noise persisted. I will have to take a peek under the car and likely remove my C3P adjustable sway bar end links and replace them with the stock AMG ones I've got sitting around. The C3P end links have lasted probably 65k miles, not bad IMO.

While under the car, I noticed my front tires were more worn than usual due to inner camber wear and/or positive toe. Due to some minor wandering on the highway and having just worked on the front suspension, I got the car realigned and the wandering is now gone and my front toe did show to be excessively positive. My move to the city and away from a garage has resulted in far too little time under the car - If I still had garage time, I bet I would have spotted the tire wear much earlier.

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to getting my Jerry (Eurocharged) tune. I actually paid Jerry waayyy back in the day for unlimited reflashes and what nots when LET was still around and when Eurocharged recently released the remote cable tune, Jerry still honored the tune I bought with him ages ago and I bought the cable and just got 'er done!

Ive been running the tune for about three weeks now and I have definitely adjusted to how the car runs. The most notable improvements were in throttle response and shifting. The tune was advertised to make 20hp and 25ft/lb torque, but I dont know if this is something I can just FEEL. Dont get me wrong - its a lil faster, but I dunno how its faster.... Cool part about this tune is that I have seen very similar fuel economy and just overall lower rpms while cruising in comparison to my stock tune.

More power + similar fuel economy + better throttle response == WIN!

For the 50 millionth time, Im hoping to get my secondary cats out and have my eyes on a 74mm m113 Tbody also! Afterward, I will take Jerry's advice and get a dyno and get my afr numbers and send that info over to Jerry and hopefully get a more specific tune for my car!

Recently, I just got an oil change and no bad things there to report

After the next oil change, the car is going to get its transmission fluid and diff fluid flushed again. Seems like yesterday I had that done, but that was almost 56k miles ago...

Happy modding all!

PS -if anyone sees an updated 744 updated luxury bumper - send it the info way!!!

Glyn M Ruck

Pleased she's treating you well. The drop links are not too much of a fuss.

johnand

John glad things are going good for you and the car. I am thinking about pulling the trigger on the tune soon as well. Hope to get up that way this summer, so we can finally meet and talk about the intake again.

TruTaing

I was looking through my photos a few days ago and realized that my car looked very different back in the day - mostly due to the fact I havent been spending the time to wash/wax. So today, I soaked the car in water, washed it, washed the wheels, clay barred, and dropped a nice thick coat of wax on my baby.

My GF snapped a pic:



Ive just been enjoying the ride recently as many issues have been resolved as of late. Happy July 4th

2nice

car looks clean man. im confused tho...i've never seen your style bumper before. ive only seen this guy:

Glyn M Ruck

Still looking good Tru

2nice - That is an Avantgarde front bumper in ROW for those MY's. One of my personal favourites.

2nice

im gonna take a shot in the dark...

ROW = rest of world

MY = mercedes years

but hes in Seattle...

FrankW

= sport pkg from 01 to 04


btw, looking good john...see you got new head lights and grille

Glyn M Ruck

Sorry - we speak in code here

ROW = rest of world
MY = model year

Yes - Frank has replied for the US that did not have Classic, Elegance & Avantgarde.

TruTaing

Ive actually had BiX and the grill on for a long time, I just havent had time to take the car out and snap some better pictures and update my sig In fact, now that ive got it so dang clean again, I dont wanna drive it until i DO get some better updated pictures. Haha.

Still searching for an updated luxury bumper in 744 though!

Midnight Koop

lookin real sharp!

i'm running the cls wheels with no spacers and it feels like the offsets dont line as evenly in the front and the rear... did you ever notice this? (before you put spacers on)

TruTaing

Thanks! Ya know, 3mm is too little for me to tell the difference and I always feel like I dont have enough tire in the rear to fill the wheel wells, while the front tires seems to fill them just fine. Im hoping to run 235/265 next time around to see how much 'better' it looks. Would love to run 275 in the rear if possible... who knows...

TruTaing

So today, I'm driving on the same stretch of highway I've driven hundreds of times and I hit a bump I've hit hundreds of times...

All of my interior devices turn off for a split second. (Speedo) Cluster, radio, AC, and MAYBE even my headlights. I glance down quickly and see everything powering back up...

The car didnt stall, didnt hiccup and I drove home w/o any issues. WTFSS???? Anyone have any idea what could have happened?

I did some searching and am terrified this could be some EIS stuff going wonky! I've just never heard of it failing while the car is moving!

FrankW

no idea...LOL...

i've hit big pot-holes few times and the shock unlocked the doors....lol