Hello everyone,

I need your help with figuring out a very frustrating problem.

Long story short, after a fenderbender that destroyed my left headlight as well, I decided to go for a look upgrade and install a pair of DEPO clear headlights.

Car had factory (frosted) Xenon headlights with automatic height adjust. Now the issues:

1. The mechanics told me somehow they did not manage to fit the pneumatic hoses (?) to the new headlights and that their self leveling won't work. However they seem to adjust every time I switch on the engine - they shift up and down then stay horizontal, so they seem to have an electric motor / adjustment feature.

Is this even a problem at all or should I not worry about it? Please note the pneumatic hoses are not fit anywhere, they are just hanging in there..

2. The left side does not work:
a. when I switch on the left turn signal, the car actually blinks the left fog light projector instead of the blinker light...
b. the xenon bulb (low beam I think) does not light up at all.

3. The mechanics said the battery went dead overnight once they installed the new headlights. Is this a coincidence or can there actually be a connection between the dead battery and issues 1 and 2?

To be noted - they fitted in the old bulbs. Based on my reading I understand the frosted ones have D2R bulbs, whereas the DEPO headlights require D2S projector bulbs. Can this influence any of the above issues?

Also, they mounted the OEM ballast and igniters on the DEPO lights. Is this a good thing to do?

Are these fixable issues, or am I bound to get new headlight(s)? Anything you may be able to assist with would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks much!

 

This is odd. I didn't think there was a pneumatic motor in the headlight. That doesn't sound right to me but I'm not sure of this. All automatic headlights i've seen are electric motors

I can't see why your foglights would blink for the turn signal since the harnesses are separate from eachother.


This is odd since your using your oem ballasts, so there should not be any difference in wiring from OEM. I can only imagine that the battery would be drained if the relay was shorted so that your ballast was always on. This also still wouldn't make sense since your lights don't even turn on. Did he say if the ballast was hot or not?

NO, this shouldn't make any difference.

Have your mechanic check the pins for the headlights. They may have been installed in the wrong order, but if this happened, then he would prob have to dissasemble the lights and reconnect them properly. Best way to find out if hte headlights are the problem is to plug them back into the factory ones to test it.

 

I didn't think the depo projectors had self leveling. Which headlights did you get?

 

Thanks for the detailed reply Fookoo. I'm going back there in a few hours and getting my car out of their shop, they just don't seem to be caring to get on top of it.

As for the ballast, he did not say a thing if it was hot or cold. If they were to be shorted, is this something revertible?

Can the fog light blinking be due to some computer mess-up? Something like an emergency activation since it does not see the blinking light active?

Sorry for all the questions or if they seem stupid, I want to make sure I am well documented and on top of the situation. Quality of service here is not top notch unfortunately.. (in Romania)

I will post some pics of the pneumatic hoses in the morning so you can see what I am referring to. That is of course assuming he actually knew what he was talking about, which I am beginning to doubt..

Thanks again!

 

Page 3 on this link, Xhale, the ones in the top middle section, 440-1136:
http://www.depo.com.tw/asp/pdf/R_M-BZ_B-CLAS_C-CLAS.pdf

 

And you're trusting those rum dumbs with your car. Get it out of there before it goes up in smoke. They obviously don't know what the hell they're doing. There is no pneumatic control for leveling it's electric servos.

 

Found something similar: Third and fourth images down, the purple wire going down the headlight. https://mbworld.org/forums/4045922-post1.html

Per the author:

However, if I read this right, he's talking about a leveling switch inside his cabin. I have no such switch, never needed to manually adjust factory lighting.

The mechanic did show me a very similar wire / hose, that they did not find a place to connect to, inside the DEPO lights. Thoughts?

Thank you!

 

OK so #2
i have heard that sometimes the depo lights have wiring issues. as for the fog light blinking that is not a headlight issue at all unplug the headlight and turn the blinker on and see what happens.

#3 get the proper bulbs once the rest of this gets sorted out
how did they get the igniters from your old lights you have to open them up to do that?

 

Doing some more reading, I found some reasoning behind the fog light issue. It seems it can be:

a. an emergency lighting feature - this turns on when the turn signal is not registering the presence of an active bulb; it seems it is actually supposed to use the fog as a blinker in this case

or

b. it seems some w203s have an active cornering function that is somehow disabled by default; this is supposed to do precisely this when active - signal with the fog light as well as the turn signal bulb; supposedly this is so you have better passive lighting when steering; it can go off triggered by a certain steering wheel spin angle

If I remember correctly however, I set on the emergency lights so both turn signals blink, and only the left fog was blinking, with the left turn signal apparently dead.

@Sam - it may be just me remembering wrong and they could have used only the OEM ballast. Do the DEPOS have their own igniters? I am not very good at this stuff sadly. Thinking further, can you actually use the same ballast for both D2S and D2R bulbs? Right now it has the stock D2R bulbs in it, but can I safely switch to D2S?

Voltage/ bulb wise, the DEPOs say they need D2S/H7/PY21W/W5. Are these values compatible with the stock bulbs currently on the DEPO ones? I guess I can only find this out by checking voltages on the actual bulbs, right?

Thanks everyone for your prompt help, really appreciate it!

 

what year is your car? i have never heard of the fog lights taking over for turn signal lights. there is the corning lights but they are not supposed to blink and have to be enabled on the w203 using star.

i am wondering if the repair shop fed up your wiring or something how bad was the damage? Having your fog light blink is not normal

 

Car is a 2001 model. Damage was pretty serious to the old headlight, noticed only when I saw it removed. Its grey back plastic case was almost broken in half.

Are you thinking of some wire damage that can be sending wrong signals?

 

my guess would be the foglight wiring to really messed up and the shop tapped into the wrong place or did something crazy and messed up the fog light. ok so what happens if you have the car off and turn the light from auto right one and then pull out to fog position? do both fog lights come on and the 2 marker lights inside the main light come on?

 

Will try doing this in a few hours when I get the car back. It's actually 6 a.m. here and the shop opens at 9. Will take some pictures as well if needed, especially for the hanging pneumatic wires / hoses, those are really funky.

 

yes please get us lots of pics that will help

 

Wonder if hes talking about the rubber hoses behind the headlight housing. I've seen them on some headlights.. Damn i lost a lot of my old PDF's gotta check an old hard drive.

 

Turns out the turn signal issue was due to a faulty socket. The car does have a standard feature to start blinking with the fog light when the blinker is dead, so mystery solved here. Now I just need to see where I can buy a pair of turn signal sockets from. The MB dealership should supply these I guess, right?

Right now two issues remain:
1. left low beam does not work - the height adjustment works fine, but the light just doesn't turn on. I tried the bulb in the other light and the bulb is fine. Any ideas on what the issue may be? Everything else works fine in the left headlight assembly, apart from the Xenon low beam.
2. right parking light just won't light up; same issue with the bulb(s), it works great if I switch it to the other side.

High beam works great on both sides.

I managed to get somewhat of a tester on the car (a very rudimentary diagnosis reading device a friend of a friend was nice to put on my car for a few minutes).

He said he was reading an error of a xenon ignition module short circuit from the Left MBR (i think, can't remember the module the error was part of..), and an undervoltage of 8V in the front SAM. I will get it diagnosed with a STAR on Monday, but in the meantime, any ideas what those two errors may mean? I have the exact same bulbs as pre DEPOs on the car so the undervoltage is strange to me. I do not have proper error codes, but will have the real thing on Monday.

Where else can I look? I received my headlights straight from the DEPO warehouse in China - can dust or debris affect the electronic contacts? Should I try cleaning them? What should I use for this if so?

Regarding the hoses, I figured this out as well. My car having had factory self adjusting Xenons did not use the hoses. They are indeed for pneumatic height adjustment, but only for manual adjust models, with a cabin switch. I guess that says a lot about the mechanics in the shop I had the car in..

Thanks again for your support!

 

Trey, thanks for your perseverance!

Fog lights work as intended when the car is not signaling a turn. If by the two marker lights inside the main one you are referring to what my computer calls the parking lights, then only the left light works. This is the smallest light bulb in the assembly if it helps.

Thanks!

 

ok good news then. First, check the fuse for the left headlight, it may be blown. If not then Try taking the ballast on the left side and installing it on the right side. You may have bad ballast. If it works on the other side then I suggest you take the right headlight and switch it to the left side to see if it works fine. If it does than the wiring in the left unit was botched. Then you would have to either open up the headlight and fix the wiring or try exchanging it. Also, did the mechanic reinstall the harness from the damage? If so, then check his wiring. He may have mixed it up.

I've never heard of the turn signal feature but I guess that pretty cool. I have heard that the w203 was offered with a foglights that turned with the vehicle though. Wonder if you have that feature also?

 

The mechanic just switched the old headlights for the new ones, keeping the oem ballasts on the DEPOs. If the ballast is faulty, I guess getting a new one would take care of the Xenon low beam, right? What about the parking light in the right light? Is that 99% bad wiring? It's strange though since two days ago the frosty OEMs were handling the ballasts great.

Any estimate of how much a new ballast would cost? I have both headlights under warranty, but it would take at least 2 months getting a new pair back, so I'm actually trying my best to make it happen with these, if at all possible.

I read about the turn feature too, but I don't think I have it activated. Some forum members were saying it's some sort of hidden feature that you can get activated with a special diagnosis software. But in I'm way over my head already

 

Im confused now. Can you list exactly what is wrong. Is your right light working fine? Is it isolated to your left one and do some lights turn on or none at all?

 

Sorry if I was confusing. Right now the following issues are still present:

Left light: low beam (Xenon) does not work
Right light: parking light does not work - this is the smallest bulb in the assembly, next to the H7 high beam (I'm not sure if this is the light's name, but it is how the computer displays the error)

I tested both bulbs in their working counterparts and they work just fine. So this leads me to believe it's something with the respective sockets or wiring, or, as you suggested, the ballast for the left light.

All other lights except the two noted above work as they should. Both of the above get registered as errors by the car's computer.

Thanks, and please apologize the confusion!

 

ok this ensures that the fuses are not blown then. You should then do as i stated above to isolate where the problem is. It could either be mixed up wiring within the lights and/or ballast issues. But its hard to say until you do this.

also, if your able to see inside the headlight housing from the back, you may be able to see the wires. Look or feel, to see if they are all connected. some may have come loose and disconnected. I'm unsure if there is a single harness within the lights or if they are connected with single disconnects for each wire.

 

About the vacuum lines - in Europe and other places outside North America, these are present on some OEM lights. They must be plugged to avoid a hissing sound and sucking in dirt and other matter that should not get into the system. See an example here from a car is Australia:

https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...os-inside.html

 

Thanks everyone for your help, I just returned from the dealership a few hours ago and they pretty much fixed everything except the low beam issue.

It turns out the problems were due to brain failure rather than electrical failure… :
1. they had forced fitted the signal lights into the socket and broke the contact pins; I had to replace the entire socket on the car
2. they did somewhat the same to the right driving light, pushing one of the contact pins inside and out of contact with the bulb; the dealership’s mechanic managed to somehow get it out and fix it; no more fog light blinking!

Now in terms of the xenon low beam, dealership told me it is due to a broken “xenon headlight computer”. They said each headlight has one of these, and they are interchangeable. They changed the left one for the right one so that I can have a safer driving environment at night until I manage to fix it.

So now that the issue is narrowed and the culprit found, I only have one question left: what exactly is this “Xenon headlight computer”? They did not give me the part number as apparently it is against their internal regulations. The price quoted (roughly $800 USD) was quite high so I want to make sure I have the right market price information before I do any shopping.

They said it goes to the bottom of each headlight and is an hermetically sealed metallic box with electronic circuit boards inside it. My guess is it either failed upon the impact that caused this entire mess in the first place, or when the dumb mechanics messed up my car trying to fix it.

So what exactly is this computer and where can I get a decent priced one? Or is the quoted price right?

Thanks!

 

It's the ballast that they are talking about. You can get aftermarket one's for very cheap. 30 dollars for the pair, but they won't be plug and play because the harness is different.