Hello MB this is my first post on his website. I must say that I looked for answers about Mercedes over the past 5 or 6 years and it's always referred me to this site but but I never became a member until now. I owned a CLK ,S500 and now a CL. I am doing a custom full sound system in my CL. My first stop was going to be removing the stock subwoofer. I don't know if the information is out there and I just wasn't finding it but I didn't find much. I have already finished removing the subwoofer if you would like me to explain the process and show pictures of me doing so I will lay it all out there for you guys!

 

That would be great.

 

I've been wanting to replace the stock sub & add an external amp/new sub so I 2nd to that.

 

I will post pics and info a little later on today glad I could be of some help .

 

First I just want to say I'm doing this off my phone so sorry if everything looks out of place.

1. First thing you're going to want to do is remove the back seats. I'm not going to touch too much into detail about this as I'm sure there's information all over on how to do this if you don't know. basically push the button at the bottom of each seat in the bottoms pop right out.

Press on Tab


2. Remove the back part of the back seat by removing 3 10mm bolts.

Behind passenger seat



Behind driver seat

3. Now you're going to remove the 10 mm bolt behind SRS plug on your back part of your pillar.

When you take out this Bolt and you pop the seat belt part out pull towards the front of the car and that and that panel will come out.

4. Now it's on to removing the dreaded rear deck. I'm not even going to lie I watched all the videos on how to take out the back headrest and I still couldn't do it.. say what you want I made two incisions directly leading up to each pole on the headrest. To be honest you will never hardly notice the cuts once you put it back in but this choice is up to you at this point. Headrest must be in the up position to make your cuts then after those parts are free you just pull the back deck lid straight up and you will hear two clips pop don't be afraid to pull a little it's okay you won't hurt anything .

5. Now your Mercedes backseat should be looking like a 95 Civic.

6. Now here was the tricky part for me I had to do a lot of investigating to find out what was holding the rear curtain in place. There are three 10mm bolts holding the rear curtain track in place. You are now going to have to tear out your carpet in your trunk.

1st one is to the left...

This is behind the driver side backseat

2nd is just the right of the subwoofer hole

3rd is in kind of in a funny place on this black plastic piece.







7. Now the backtrack should pull straight up. Now your whole subwoofer should be visible.

squeeze down on the tabs in the trunk on the bottom of the subwoofer this will allow you to lift the subwoofer out from the back deck. Once you free both tabs on each side of the subwoofer in the trunk you will not have the choice to either cut the subwoofer wires up top or just unplug it if you're putting in another one. ( note to self if you're going aftermarket just chop the plug off)

These are the Taps you're going to squeeze to release the subwoofer.

now that you have the subwoofer free out of its cavity you have a multitude of choices of what to do with your sound system at this point. These Mercedes are very well sealed off. With having that gas tank standing up directly behind the back seats it doesn't allow a lot of pressure from the trunk to come into the cab which leads to less bass inside the car. I do custom car audio fabrication and my reason for pulling out the stock subwoofer is because now I will have a 10 inch hole in my rear deck allowing all the base pressure to come from the trunk directly into the cab


I hope this will help anyone whether if you were just trying to remove your rear deck, fix your window shade or take out your stock subwoofer. Follow these steps in Reverse to put your car back together. If I missed anything or you guys have any more questions let me know I'll try to help where I can.

 

be careful guys
Removing this speaker requires removing the rear deck is a pain in the *ss
the speaker comes out from inside the car, not the trunk
really
you have to unbolt the rear electric curtain from inside the trunk first
you will also find 4 clips there, I broke them off

then remove the rear deck with the curtain on it, then disconnect the curtain's connector

I do not recommend this or take 4 hours and be very carefull

 

I don't plan on re-using the stock sub so am thinking about removing the upper liner in the trunk then using a dremel tool to cut the old sub out. Once I have the 10" hole, I'll bolt a shallow box w/ a new sub underneath the rear deck using 4 little L brackets then wire it up w/ an external amp. I think this is much quicker than removing the backseat & also reducing the chance of damaging other parts such as the seats & electric curtain. What do you think?

 

If you're asking my opinion I highly recommend not doing that. Yes it's a little extra work but do it the correct way if you were unable to do it I would either take it to a local shop and see what the labor would be to do it correctly. If a customer asked me to do what you said about putting the small enclosure underneath and putting L brackets I would tell them to go to Audio Express home of the $1 install !!

Just remember this is still a Mercedes were talking about not a Honda Civic.. just sayin.

 

It's just a plan. I probably won't do it & will just leave the stock sub as-is. It's not the best sound but it's decent. Thanks for posting the "How To" though. Have a good day.

 

A terrific post, but In my experience, this is an extremely difficult way to get the stock subwoofer out of the way so a decent sub in the trunk can "work" :-) Far easier (and just as effective) to cut the GD thing out. Link: Cut out the subwoofer : I just cut across the 3 metal components of the spider, essentially cutting out the central part - and left the outer ring in there.

Let it also be said that getting the stock sub to work with an aftermarket amp (@ 2 ohms) is doable - but it doesn't sound like much. In addition, a trunk sub will NOT sound good unless you do take out the stock sub. Because of the pressure transfer, the stock sub if left in place "woofs" along with a trunk-mounted sub and muddies the sound considerably.