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My driver's soft close feature is working only intermittently, so I started to do some investigating. While I have not yet dug into the driver's door to remove the actuator, I did pick up a different actuator with a similar part number off of eBay and opened it up. Here's something interesting:
Original actuator that comes with the "First Generation" W216 Coupes equipped with soft close:
That white thing over to the left is the Soft Close power-close motor drive. Alas, there's a big empty space with some empty mounting holes in the case.
Here's the "later", post 08/2010 "Second Generation" soft close actuator:
So, as the owner of a First Generation (2008-2010) W216, do you Second Generation owners notice a power opening feature on your doors? First Generation owners really have to tug on the exterior and interior door latches to get them to open. I'm figuring this mighty heave got Mercedes to add a power assist feature to help open the door latching mechanism and relieve the owner from tugging.
Anybody know anything about this? Maybe it's retro-fittable to earlier generation W216s by purchasing the later actuator.
Unfortunately, no. My original issue is the driver's side door doesn't always power close, probably due to a misadjusted microswitch. From my examination of the closing mechanism, fixing it would take disassembly of the entire component.
Anybody else having problems with the W216 soft close doors (electric, not interested in the earlier pneumatic issues).
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