W204 No Power to DRL's
Thread Starter
Junior Member
Joined: Oct 2014
Posts: 39
Likes: 1
2013 C300 W204
W204 No Power to DRL's
I'm looking for some diagnostic help here.
My DRL's will not turn on. I have done the following things and believe its an issue with power to the lights themselves.
1. I have already, of course, used the settings option on the screen to turn on the daytime running lights.
2. I removed the DRL's and at home, put a 9v battery onto 2 leads and the lights came on fine. So it's not the lights themselves.
3. I put a volt meter onto the connector at the front bumper as best I could, the leads are a little thicker than the holes in the connector, but went through every position of the rotating lights knob and did not get anything.
4. I have looked to see if the DRL's are on a separate fuse and the best I have found is that they could be on an unmarked fuse, or they are not on a fuse at all, but something else, but do not know.
5. I have also pushed the button to the left of the rotating lights knob as I'm not sure if that is for fog lights, the DRL's, or something else, but it had no effect.
There is some history with the car that's probably relevant. I purchased it from an auction after it had been stolen and stripped of the front bumper, grille, headlights, and same in the back end. I purchased a body kit from extreme dimensions rather than OEM body panels and also spyder projection headlamps which work perfectly. I'm guessing that somewhere in the engine compartment or under the dash, there is a problem with getting power to the lights themselves. Would love to know where to look next.
Thank you in advance for your help.
My DRL's will not turn on. I have done the following things and believe its an issue with power to the lights themselves.
1. I have already, of course, used the settings option on the screen to turn on the daytime running lights.
2. I removed the DRL's and at home, put a 9v battery onto 2 leads and the lights came on fine. So it's not the lights themselves.
3. I put a volt meter onto the connector at the front bumper as best I could, the leads are a little thicker than the holes in the connector, but went through every position of the rotating lights knob and did not get anything.
4. I have looked to see if the DRL's are on a separate fuse and the best I have found is that they could be on an unmarked fuse, or they are not on a fuse at all, but something else, but do not know.
5. I have also pushed the button to the left of the rotating lights knob as I'm not sure if that is for fog lights, the DRL's, or something else, but it had no effect.
There is some history with the car that's probably relevant. I purchased it from an auction after it had been stolen and stripped of the front bumper, grille, headlights, and same in the back end. I purchased a body kit from extreme dimensions rather than OEM body panels and also spyder projection headlamps which work perfectly. I'm guessing that somewhere in the engine compartment or under the dash, there is a problem with getting power to the lights themselves. Would love to know where to look next.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Super Member
Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 862
Likes: 28
2010 e550 coupe
Hey sorry to bring this back up but did you ever solve this? I'm having a similar issue, my passenger drl stopped working. It had been flickering and when I went to change it I could actually hear it short and now there is no power going through the cable. I've tried everything here including changing the driver side one which still illuminates. The main reason I attempted to change the functional driver side drl is because I scanned the car and got an error for only the driver side having a grounding issue/short (it mentioned nothing about the non functioning passenger side)... this has led me to believe that maybe they have some common link that requires both to be functional to work. I also did not see any fuse or anything that I could change here so i'm not really sure how to remedy this. The socket also is not an issue as I checked the wire before it.
Thread Starter
Junior Member
Joined: Oct 2014
Posts: 39
Likes: 1
2013 C300 W204
I did solve it, but unfortunately, its not going to help you. In my case what happened was I bought a new body kit from Extreme Dimensions that included LED DRL's. But they created the female sockets much too long/deep, so eventually I figured out the only thing wrong was that the contacts from the male side weren't connecting. I took my Dremel and cut 1/3" off of the socket and that was enough for the contacts to touch and like that, it was fixed. 3rd party body kits sometimes are "almost" plug and play, but not 100%.
