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One last thought...
comparing your intermediate pad black “barrel/post” clip retainers to what i remember of mine ... I see they are in fact a c clip design with inserts...yours are not broken.
But,
you seem to to be missing the inserts.
they're either on the studs in that red car...or gone.
if the pad isn’t wiggling around you might be good to go. Otherwise you may want to source some tube stock/etc. to insert between the stud and black c clip...before you button it all up and get that black under-seat dressing in under the sills and such!
(I don’t drive my w203 too much, so i always keep a small bucket of damp rid on the back propeller shaft hump. Always amazed how much water I get out of that little bucket...)
I went to the seller’s house to pick up the side trim that I forgot on Saturday. I searched the floor of the donor car and couldn’t find anything. When I came home I checked the bag of fasteners I collected on Saturday and found these:
It appears that I had the part I needed the entire time. (I guess I am like Dorothy and her ruby slippers.) I must have picked them up and forgot about them. If they aren’t the right parts, they are well-fitting wrong parts.
One disappointment-I could not open the trunk to access the Bowden cable guides because the seller had removed the battery. I tried to reach for them from the rear seat but that didn’t work either. If I feel like I cannot live without them I will buy a set from the dealer.
Last edited by KevinH2000; Jul 23, 2019 at 10:59 PM.
The rear seat is back together and Jake was kind enough to send me two of the clips that hold the Bowden cables to the body of the car. I have two minor issues:
1. There is no hole in the top of the trunk structure to hold the driver's side Bowden clip. I plan to get out the drill tomorrow and take care of that. I'll study Jake's photos to determine the best location.
2. I tested the headrest release prior to installing the cushioned side panels and they worked. When I installed the panels, the panel on the driver's side pinches the tubing and prevents it from working. I routed the tubing under the fiber board trim on top of the parcel shelf as it was in the donor car. I think Jake ran his behind the seat bottoms. I'll re-route it.
Here are some photos. I ran a measuring tape to show the length of items that can fit easily in the trunk either straight or diagonal. The body of the tape measure is three inches - add that to the measurement you see on the tape to arrive at the total length. It appears that you can carry an object about 64 inches long straight. 77 inches diagonal Right-side handle Left-side handle
I had no idea where or how to route my vacuum line.
I know the switch is high on the rear SAM, but the OEM fixed connection is low by driver side sill plate threshold...so yes, I went low and routed it the best I could. It’s been working fine!
Strange you have no little hole for the clip. Odd.
It certainly was for me. Tapping the side hinge plate holes was the only “work” this project required of me.,.anyway here are some shots, I sincerely hope they help!
I'm glad that your clips arrived, the absolutely very least I could do!
I took a few minutes this morning and arrived at a solution for the Bowden cable clips. On my car, the hole on the far left was too large for the clip and it wouldn't stay in. I wrapped some tape around the end of the clip and now it fits tightly. I prefer using an existing hole to drilling another one. I think the clips in the donor car were a slightly different design than the those that you sent me. If I go back for more parts, I'll pull one off and post a picture. I'll tackle the task of re-routing the headrest tubing later today.
Thanks again for your assistance. I'm adding the documentation you sent me the project to my Mercedes binder. It's likely to come in handy at some point in the future.
By the way, I've looked at photos of C63 rear seats for sale. Before I can invest in that project, I'd like to see a set in person and take precise measurements. In some of the photos I can see mounting hardware and it is definitely different from the W203 seats. They may also be too large to fit in the available space. (My C63 front seats had identical seat rails to the W203, but the seats themselves are slightly wider. When I was installing them, I had a moment when I thought they were too wide to fit.)
I had also thought of the tire pressure monitor upgrade. I will probably need new tires in the fall and if I decide to go with the project that would be a good time to install the sensors. I think some of the other parts should be available used. However, I could not source the wiring harness.
I went back to the parts car today and purchased the OEM rear deck cover for a car with folding seats.
Rear deck cover for folding seats
This offers three advantages over the one that came in the car:
1. It has the cut outs for the "seat open" indicators. This solves the first-world problem of being unable to tell whether your seat backs are latched without actually getting out of your seat and checking them.
2. It hangs down slightly lower and fully covers the metal in the rear shelf. (On the rare occasions when I have the seat backs folded down, it was a glaring problem.)
Rear deck cover from car without folding seat option. Note the exposed black metal where the deck cover ends.
3. It has the Harmon Kardan logo on the driver's side speaker cover. This will let everyone know that I went to the trouble of retrofitting the HK rear deck speakers.
There is also one obvious problem - the sun has faded it to a purple color. I will be painting it with SEM fabric paint. The cover that is currently in the car also required restoration.
I also picked up the rear parcel shelf insulation. It has the factory cut outs for the rear deck speakers.
This will also need a clean up before intstallation.
YES!!!
Soooo good!
Mine has “slight” purple-ing on the very most rear part...but again, I’ll only pull it out “if I have to”...and most likely replace it with my “mint” C55 one that’s been sitting in a box for near a decade now!😂
Love the love you’re giving this w203!
(I still can’t believe they designed, manufactured and inventoried different lengths toward the cabin for folding/not folding...for the 4” it just doesn’t seem worth the headache...)
(I still can’t believe they designed, manufactured and inventoried different lengths toward the cabin for folding/not folding...for the 4” it just doesn’t seem worth the headache...)
I hope that the car is worthy of my affection and provides some return on the investment of my time. I'll check to see whether the shelf cover in the car has a different part number than the one I install. It is hard to believe that they would have two different parts.
The real justification for putting in the new deck cover is that during my speaker installation I had worked on the motorized sun shade. (Mine goes up fine, but I need to manually push in the arms while someone else operates the control in order to get it to go down.) I cleaned an lubricated the tracks while I had the sun shade out of the car, but that didn't fix the problem. I want to take it out and see whether there are any adjustments I can make on the work bench. It bugs me when something doesn't work correctly.
It was a chilly, damp and windy day here in Central Virginia and I decided to make good use of my time and installthe rear deck for the folding seats including the seat-unlatched indicators. Note the full coverage of the exposed metal.
If you ever need to do this,here is the technique for attaching the indicators to the latch mechanism.
The part that attached to the indicator is easily removed from the latch mechanism.
After you attach it to the indicator, it slips into the latch mechanism by pushing it down on the thin piece of wire.
The installation of the deck was not the primary goal of today's work. The driving force behind today's project was fixing the rear sunshade. For the first time in my ownership, the rear sunshade is operational - just in time for winter.
I had lubricated the mechanism when I installed my rear deck speakers in the hope that it would fix the problem with the shade failing to retract, but the shade would still not go down without a push on the side arms. I removed the mechanism and tampered with the inner workings of the transmission. After much trial and error it is now working as designed.
Last edited by KevinH2000; Nov 17, 2019 at 11:27 PM.
So glad you have the rear blind operating as designed. There was an old TSB on adding felt to it due to failure because of heat...I’ll see if I can locate it...
I don’t use it a lot...but when I do, the kids LOVE it! Ha!
(I still can’t believe they designed, manufactured and inventoried different lengths toward the cabin for folding/not folding...for the 4” it just doesn’t seem worth the headache...)
I'm also puzzled by this. When I had the covers off, I took photos of the labels on them.
The part numbers are different as are the descriptions. Rollo is probably a reference to the roller shade and Schwarz is the color - black. Durchlage may mean "breakthrough" - possibly a reference to the opening created by the folding of the seats.
It may make sense from both financial and environmental perspectives to make different versions of the covers for folding and non-folding seats. Most sedans don't have the folding seats and saving the material (Mercedes made 1.4 million W203 sedans) may have been the best decision. It also allowed workers to avoid the need to punch holes in the deck covering for the seat-unlatched indicators.
That said, it would have also made sense to have a version without the speaker grills installed since the Harmon Kardan and earlier Bose options were also rare and the cost saving on speaker grills and the reduction in plastic that might end up in landfills would have been substantial.
When the car does not have the Bose/HK option, the speaker cutouts still exist. the right side becomes a stowage cubby for the first aid kit. The left side I think is just a dummy grille. Regarding cost savings, it's not about material, it's about labor. Let's say they made the same cover for both style seats. Now they would need to either have a punch-out that a factory technician would need to remove when installing into a car with folding seats, or they would need to have an extra plastic cover for the holes that the tech would need to install. That all takes time. It's much easier to just grab the next part off the rack, which is delivered in order of build sheets by the supplier. As for the lower part of the cover being cut off on the non-folding seat version, yes, that does save the supplier a bit of extra material, so for them it can end up being a significant savings when building millions of parts. Only radical the tree-huggers are concerned about landfills. Since everything on Earth came from the Earth, we aren't going to run out of place on Earth to dump discards. As long as the landfill is properly built and lined and seals, unless it's something radioactive, we really don't care what goes in there because it's never coming out. Now, some people may not want a landfill in their neighborhood, but that's just a local issue. Ironically, there is a very nice neighborhood not too far from where I grew live that was built on a former landfill. I remember as a kid going there with my dad to sump things. Now, there are houses.
Your explanation sounds logical. I have a couple of observations. One is Mercedes related and the other isn't.
Mercedes related:
German auto makers seem to take a slightly different approach to assembly of their cars than the Japanese. I had a 1996 Infiniti G20 when I bought my C230. During my ownership, I installed factory fog lights from a wrecked car. All I had to do was cut two holes in the bumper (the locations were obvious from the design of the front fascia) and the wiring for the fog lights was already there. All I had to do was unwrap the wiring and plug the connector into the back of the fog lights. (I also had to install a switch and a relay, but the car was ready for those too.) I think the Japanese put one wiring harness in the car regardless of the options. This approach appears to simplify the supply chain and reduce the potential for errors. Based on my experience with the C230 and a 2000 Porsche Boxster, the Germans appear to design a different harness for each car depending on which options will be installed. This approach saves material, but appears to add complexity. It also makes life difficult for people like Jake and me who like to add options to their car at a later date.
While we are on the topic of German automakers, why do the Germans leave so many blank switch areas on there cars? Case in point, the control panel on my C230: Blank switches
My car has eight blank switches even though it seems to have most of the available options that need a switch. It seems like Mercedes could have moved the lock button up to the top row and eliminated an entire row of blank switches.
Non-Mercedes - I would exercise caution when buying a house built on a land fill. I believe that some of the land fills emit methane from decaying organic material which can collect in a house causing a hazardous condition.
Last edited by KevinH2000; Nov 20, 2019 at 08:57 PM.
Actually, MBZ uses a minimal number of different wiring harnesses for options. What they do is encapsulate options in the CAN bus transceiver units. For example, if you car did not have heated seats, to add them, you need no new wiring - just a new upper control panel with the buttons, a proper seat controller, and the seat heating elements themselves. The control of this is based on signals in the seat controller and upper control panel. The wiring is already there in the CAN bus. There are blank buttons on the upper control panel because they use the same one on different cars, like hatchbacks and wagons that have rear wipers. Also, you are missing two buttons for seat ventilation.
Regarding building houses on a landfill, the methane gas generated by decaying organic material would be long gone before any development. Although a landfill seems simple, it's actually fairly complex. They continually churn the debris and compact it and relocate where new "deposits" are made. This is all done to keep methane and other gases to a minimum. Of course all the "horrible" plastics that go into landfills don;t degrade much and don't generate gases.
Thanks for sharing your insights. I'm may be making assumptions based on my limited experience with Mercedes. I didn't know cooled seats were an option on the W203 and I didn't think about options for the other body styles.
When I retrofitted my C63 seats (C63 Seats), there was no wiring that I could see for the seat memory, so I assumed that Mercedes took the same approach as Porsche and made a specific harness for each car. I ultimately decided that attempting to retrofit the seat memory was beyond my knowledge level. Even with the more modest goal of just making the seats work it took me several months to figure everything out. I was also aware that the C63 seats were from the next generation of C Class vehicles and that it was unrealistic to expect anything to be plug and play.
I retrofitted heated, fully adjustable memory seats in my Porsche Boxster. I've attached a pdf describing the process. Working with the Porsche seats was easy compared to the C63 seats. Based on that experience, I can testify that Porsche does not put a single inch of wire or any electrical components in their cars that is not required. Maybe I thought that the Mercedes and Porsche engineers went to the same schools and took the same general approach to their work.
What I would really like to do is retrofit a set of C63 seats in my Boxster. The C63 seats would be great on the track. They are also significantly more comfortable for daily use than the Boxster's seats.
Last edited by KevinH2000; Nov 23, 2019 at 08:52 AM.
Well after VARIOUS people told me NO...and even two Dealers telling me NO...I can say YES.
Pictures coming soon...
Hello, thank for the information. I am also interested on retrofitting all of the seats from a station wagon to my sedan. Do you know if the back rest on the rear seats will be compatible?
The back upper section on the wagon latches on the sides and has corresponding hand latches to release the sections. This is vastly different than the sedan, with trunk mounted release levers and more centrally located latches.
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