*this is a re-post since my first one was moved to d tech forum.....with no luck....

both front control arms on my 2001 C240 has just been replaced by my dealer, now, when i turn on my xenons, they hardly go up and down with their auto levellers, now, the headlights are pointing downwards. The auto levelling function seem to work,however, it seems that the default headlight level is out of whack. i tried looking under the front stabilizer/sway bars, and the sensor seem fine.

so now, when i switch on the car with the headlamps, the beam hardly goes up and down,unlike before, where u can really see it point down then go back up to the correct level.

anything i should check?????????????

my dealer is so so far away, and they r denying that they have done sumthing to the car which affected the xenons levelling. they suggested that i manually adjust the lamps, these may raise the headlamp beams, but its pretty obvious that the auto levelling is the problem here.....

 

You know what? I've suspected all along whether there is an auto-levelling function in the W203. Cos in my C320, I don't see any auto-levelling whatsoever after switching on the xenons.

However, in the S500, the auto-levelling is clearly visible.

 

there is auto levelling of the xenons in the W203, im pretty sure as my car is already 3years old, and its only this time that the autolevelling went crazy after the servicing.

 

I went to the dealer to get mine fixed. It was the sway bar sensors that were mounted incorrectly like sunman had said. You should follow his advice on your other thread and make sure they are mounted properly

 

so psk145, where ur sensors replaced? or were they just adjusted on the swaybar?

can someone post or email a pic of how the front sensor on the sway bar is attached????????????

im the only W203 here with xenons.

bruno787@yahoo.com

 

I have Bi-Xenons on my W203. Came from the factory and have always Autoleveled just fine. Sensor is on the sway bars I believe front and rear. On the passenger side, well right hand side.

 

yeah, ived seen it on the passenger's side, front right hand, however, i have no means of knowing if mine's re-attached correctly when my car was in the workshop, as i live in another city, so far from the dealership, and im the only w203 here with xenons.


my front sensor when viewed from the front right wheel in relation to the front bumper is attached like this: " < "

so im wondering if its correct or not, or if its supposed to be like " > " in relation to the front bumper.

all i remember was that the dealer "loosened" my front sway bar while installing the front control arms, and after that, my auto levelling went out of whack!

 

mine were not reinstalled properly. I dont know the correct orientation since I've never been beneath my car and have never seen them

 

This is a fairly old thread and I found it through search. I just got my car back from service from the dealer, also had the front control arms touched. The bushings were "broken" and needed to be replaced. I just drove my car tonight and noticed that the headlights seem to be pointing really low. Like Bruno, I tested the auto-leveling (left it on AUTO and turned on car), the lights barely shift up and down. Before, it would go way up and then back down. Now, instead it goes down very little and back up. Do you think its a sensor problem? I'd hate to bring it back to dealer again also, my car was there for a week (tranny jerk, creaking front, insulation touching driveshaft). Any new updates on the problem?

 

Here are some pictures. This would be looking into the passenger side front wheel well.

Is the circled red part in the first picture the auto level sensor?










Here is a picture of the rear one.



Is my front one installed properly?

 

it's just the sensors, that happened to mine when I had the control arm replaced too. took it back the next day and they fixed it right away.

 

Did it just need readjusting? I'll see if I can get this done without an appointment, don't really want to leave the car for the whole day just to have the sensor adjusted. If theres specific spot it should be in, maybe I'll just loosen the nut and move it a little. I looked at it closer, I think the sensor needs to move a little left along the swaybar.

 

i'm not sure how they did it cuz all they told me was they had to reset the sensor. I can look it up on the service paper if i can find it tomorrow.

 

the auto levelling needs to be recalibrated back to spec by using the star diagnosis computer.

as for me, since im so far away from the dealership 3days by inter-island ship, an alternative temporary solution is to adjust the beams upward, itll correct the headlight beam level, but it wont auto-level as it is before, and for sure, u dont like that idea.-but i had to do it coz its the dealerships best solution for my situation.

 

Were both of your sensors repositioned incorrectly? Bruno, like you mentioned before, your sensor looked like this "<". Mine looks like that also, and I think its supposed to be like this ">"?

This is the thread from the C32/C55 section.
https://mbworld.org/forums/showthrea...78#post1070378

rrf has a pic showing the sensor like this


Maybe the mechanic just left it positioned like this "<" and recalibrated it according to that position?

 

hmmmm...i really didnt notice, but as far as i know, mine's is like "<", and it seems to be the correct mount coz the mechanics didnt remove the sensor clamp from the sway bars as far as i remember. so can anyone here tell if its supposed to be like "<" or ">"??????

on the other hand, its also possible that they had reinstalled it the other way around coz they loosened the sway bar bushings which caused the sway bars to hang down. we just need to confirm this position with others' c class. there r only around 4 other c class in my city, but since im abroad now and currently here in the U.S. i might pass by an mb dealership nearby n check out some c class.

ill get back to u asap, the latest on wednesday coz im also longing to get my auto levelling to work again.

 

Its possible to have it positioned both ways if they dropped the sway bar. Frankw, how is your sensor positioned? I'm going to take my car to the dealer tomorrow to have it calibrated and fixed. The reason is because I took off the U bracket and moved it a little bit to double check the position and moved it back. So I think either way I have to have it recalibrated.

 

bnz616....ok pls let me know what the correct sensor arm position is, and how the dealer fixes the problem. thanks.

 

Took the car to the dealer this morning. I'm not sure exactly what they did...I want to know also, but the paper only said that I stated the headlamps are pointing low after previous service/work. Then the repair w,as basically just described as headlamps adjusted. I peeked through the whe'el at the sensor and it looks like they didn't touch it. It is still positioned as "<". When the headlights level, they start low and move up to the right height...does that sound normal? I think the headlights used to move up then back down, but I'm not sure....I seem to think it did. The headlights are the right height now, but I'm not sure if the leveling mechanism is working properly or if the sensor is in the correct orientation. I mentioned it was the sensor, but I'm not sure if they did anything about that. I have a feeling they simply aimed it up =\. I was going to adjust the sensor myself, but I was thinking that they need to help me recalibrate it anyways, so I decided to let them do it all. Maybe I should've tried reversing the sensor first.

Frankw, can you take a peek at your sensor through the wheel or with the wheel turned towards the passenger side full lock and see if your sensor is sitting like "<" or like this ">".

It's not a really big deal, but I'm curious how this sensor is really supposed to be positioned so that it works properly.

 

When you move those sensors they have to do a re-calibrating technique to reset the auto-leveling system. I had my alternator replaced and got the car back to find that the lights were aimed at the ground. If you can not get to the dealer you can trick the system to fix it. Unplug the front sensor and start the car and the lights will level up and stay there. No warnings are displayed either. The MB Tech that came to my house on X-mas Eve and I figured this out. Also if you ever need absolute assistance from a tech than call the 1-800 number. They will send a tech out to you to look at the issue. Even on X-Mas Eve!

 

So unplug the sensor....start the car....turn on the lights and wait until they level...turn everything off and plug the sensor back in? That will reset the sensor? Or did you mean unplug it and leave it unplugged so that it doesn't give out any readings at all.

 

ive had that problem. the lights needed to be calibrated. then the auto leveling on the passenger light stopped working and would adjust all the way. my car looked like it had a lazy eye.

ive taken my car in about 3-4x for xenon leveling issues. the last time the replaced the passenger headlight assembly.

 

For an interim fix until you can get to the dealer for recalibration, which I heard takes like an hour to do, you can unplug the sensor so you can drive at night. That is what I did since I needed to drive the car over the weekend until I could get it to the dealership. Then I had the car back the next day and all was well again. I also got it to work by unplugging the wires for the leveling from the headlight unit itself. But found that they did not always both go to the same spot on restart. Which was wierd since the leveler system was unplugged. So I just went with the sensor on the sway bar disconected since it worked and make the light go to the default level position. You just did not see them bounce when first started in the dark.

 

ahhh so it seems that the sensor position whether < or > has no relation to the levelling system. i guess the star diagnosis computer is the only way to go to have things normalized, too bad theres no star diagnosis in my area.

 

Yeah, maybe position doesn't really matter. The funny thing is I went under there last night and tried to flip the sensor over to the other side and got it to move quite a lot, but it didn't seem to affect the leveling. I was able to pivot the arm almost an inch to the right that that instead of "<", it was sitting like this "|". I didn't get it any further cause the sway bar was in the way and I couldn't pivot it over it. I turned on the car to test it out to see if there was any difference in leveling, there wasn't. The sensor is probably so far off that the its not reading anything anymore. It's probably the same result as unplugging the sensor. My headlights are at the right level now, but starts at low, then moves up to the right level like mctwin2kman described would happen. It is probably not reading at the current position, way off from the range, so its doing the default thing?