TruTaing

This was not very fun.

I am not a trained professional. I am just sharing my ridiculous experience with you guys. I don't wanna be the reason why someone cuts a hole in their headliner and stuff decides to not work, so follow these instructions at your own risk.

Hardware:
A 203 821 95 51 - Sensor
A 203 540 82 06 - Harness
A 203 822 02 14 - Mounting Bracket

Parts total was less than $280.

Tools required:
6 sided T20 or T25
Small flat headed screw driver
Medium flat headed screw driver
Soft Towel

Optional:
12" ruler
2' useless string
Drinks
Friends

Basic steps:

Pop the front dome light out and let it hang. There are tons of wires to keep it up.



Pop out the sun visor's light.

Remove the driver side sun visor:
This is pretty well documented, but it involves removing three screws. The side that holds the sun visor will come completely off while the other part just comes loose and will stay attached to the head liner.

Remove front and rear driver side grab handles:
This isn't really documented anywhere, but there are two covers on each grab handle where they attach to the ceiling. Under each cover, there are two flat holes that are hidden. Put the small flat head screw driver in the smaller hole and push towards the outside of the car. This will push a part of the big plastic clips holding the grab handles to the ceiling out of the lock position. With your other hand, gently, put the medium sized screwdriver between the headliner and the grab handle mounting point. Pry away w/ the medium sized screw driver. Its in there pretty good, so give it a good prying, but be sure NOT to mess up your headliner in the process.

Pry the srs tab up on the driver side C pillar. Remove the 6 sided bolt in there.

Pry the rear dome light out and let it hang.

At this point, you should have both from and rear dome lights + the driver side sun visor light hanging while the head liner on the driver side is ONLY held up by the interior of each of the A, B, and C pillars.

Before we can loosen the each of the interior portions of the pillars, we have to remove the weather strips that hide how the pillars are held in.

Remove the weather strips around the driver side doors:
Just pry again the body of the car with the medium flat head screw driver, but be sure to place a towel or something soft surface between the screw driver and body.



Pull out interior covers of the A pillar:
Gently pull the interior covers down. The clips stubbornly go in and out...

Pull out interior covers of the B pillar:
There are 4 clips that hold this pillar to the frame. Pry them out the against the body with the medium sized screw driver remembering to place a towel between the screw driver. Two of these clips are yellow and two are black. When you remove this cover, the seat belt will still be running through it. Take a look at how the adjustable seat belt mechanism works so when you reinstall it, you wont mess it up multiple times and remove/reinstall it multiple times incorrectly like I did.

Pull out the interior covers of the C pillar:
Much like the A pillar, you can just kinda pull. Here are a pic of the clips that hold them in:





With all three pillars loosely attached to the car, we should have enough space to lay down our wiring from the driver side of the car, but first - we have to cut a hole in the rear portion of the head liner.... Just cut that hole to make the bracket stay. Its pretty self explanatory and sounds scary as shi.., but by the time you've come to this point you'll be ready to rip apart the rest of the car's interior anyways.

Once you've cut the appropriate hole for the bracket, install the bracket into the headliner.

Use the driver side space in between the headliner and the roof to guide your wires from your front dome light to the hole in the ceiling.

I was able to easily run the wire from the driver side door to the dome light, but running the wire to the new hole was the hard part. Here, I taped one end of my useless string onto the end of a ruler, and pushed the ruler through my hole out towards my rear driver side door. As a result, I was able to pull out the ruler from the rear driver side door + grab the end of the string. I tied this string to the wires I wanted to run to the whole, and just pulled them through to the hole.

Plug the harness in at the dome light and at the sensor. Push the sensor into the bracket carefully and it'll stay in place.



Reassemble in reverse order paying special attention to the B pillar and the mechanism it uses to allow the seat belt to slide up and down! Also make sure that the A and C pillars reattach appropriately - you may end up thumping the pillars a bit to get the clips to lock again.

Afterward, take your star diag (cuz we all got like 3 extra, right?) and have the rear SAM set to Mexico w/ IMS. I think. I haven't gotten this far yet, but I know I have to set something in the rear to Mexico + IMS. You're gonna have to vacum out your car too because the headliner is made out of some weird flakey material...

I know this seems a bit ridiculous of a process for a bit "more" security when our cars are already armed w/ a pretty good system. I dont think I should share what I have found w/ our alarm systems publicly, so if you need reasons for installing this - PM me. At this point, I feel its a necessity.

Additionally, I can see why Mercedes has a special "soft plastic wedge tool" now that I've done this process... Everything seems to be clipped on or wedged in place.

Have fun + good luck. I highly suggest a friend / drink (same thing?) for this because its very tedious.

Special thanks to Waveykat for helping guide me through this. If this fails, blame him.

Edit: Pricing info included

WaveyKat

blame me hahahahah??? looks good great DIY hahah lol

nickgailloux

Nice job... I've heard thats a tough DIY. How much did the parts run you?

BF_JC230

You DID NOT update / upgrade the upper control panel to the unit with the IMS OFF button? So your IMS is always ON when the alarm is on? There were no problems with it activating after you installed this? Have you had it STAR programmed?

Updates???

Nice thread - Thanks...Look forward to our w203 having IMS in the future!
Jake

nlpamg

thanks for the DIY!

it's been added to the sticky.

Glyn M Ruck

Wow Tru - good DIY - Thank heaven mine came installed & integrated into the rear light & Parktronic display. - rather you than me.

BF_JC230

Can you PLEASE post more dtailed shots? How did you cut the hole, how did you mount the bracket? How did you locate the bracket? ANY AND ALL additional images WILL HELP.

Thank you!

pcy

pardon my ignorance, what does IMS do (besides from sensing motion in the car) ?

WaveyKat

thats all it does.. its an added feature to the alarm system!

WaveyKat

you just center the bracket right after the sunroof and use a sharp blade and cut the hole a bit smaller than the bracket.. fit the bracket into the hole and it will stay in place! then clip in sensor onto the bracket!

Norwichdelta06

gotcha.... i'm not sure about our alarm system but does it have a window break sensor?

WaveyKat

no our alarm does have that! but with the motion sensor if the window breaks it will sound the alarm..

amaazon

So I finally did this DIY. Everything is done except for this one connector. The connections to the dome light and IMS are made but this one connector I can't figure out where it goes. Can anyone help?

WaveyKat

hey.. i cant remember clearly but i dont think you that third Wire connection just tuck it into the Roof and you should be good to go.. test the system first before putting it back together!

capt_paul

I just ordered the IMS from Steve, it is currently 320E shipped. I hope to see it at my door in a few weeks!

I have the instructions for the install on the MB Maintenance DVD.

amaazon

Can you verify where that last connector goes. Thanks.

jrsmith_68

Can you show a pic of the other end of that harness? I don't remember seeing that connector when I retrofitted my IMS.

amaazon

It's already in the car. It just comes off the main harness. meaning there were 3 connectors, one for the dome light and one for the IMS itself. The only other pic I have of it is this.

jrsmith_68

Sorry I have checked back in a while, maybe you already figured this out, but I don't remember three connectors on the IMS harness, and EPC shows the IMS harness only having two connectors. See screen capture from EPC.

capt_paul

I installed the interior motion sensor, along with the upper control unit yesturday. I went to the dealer today since I had an SRS light on and asked to have the rear SAM set to Mexico with IMS. Dumb *** called me later and said that he doesn't know how to do it.

Is there any other way to get this done without going to SoCal to get someone else to do it? It would be a nice day trip however.

johnand

You could always drive up here to the NW, and I'll program it for you

capt_paul

On my service receipt, in regards to programming the IMS:

"Attempted for code ata for interior motion sensor. Rear SAM would not accept the coding due to it is not a US configuration."

This is, of course, after giving instructions that the rear SAM needs to be set to Mexico with IMS.

My SA at Fletcher Jones says that it cannot be done. I even bet him $100 that it could be done, but he did not accept the bet. It would have been an easy $100 for me.

Luckily, I was not charged for diagnosis for SRS nor the attempted programming

Anyone available that can program my car this Sunday in SoCal? Please let me know and I could drive down from Vegas

W203E35

Is this all that needs to be done? Mexico with Interior Motion Sensor?

Thanks

Silver C

How do I know if my car is equipped with the ims and/or alarm system?

capt_paul

The IMS sits in about the center of the headliner and it is a rectangular-shaped device, quiet aft of the sunroof if you are equipped.