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I bought a 2002 CLK 430 convertible and a previous owner had replaced the stock radio/nav/controller with an aftermarket. I had a stereo shop put in a Kenwood Excelon DMX905S unit. It is a touch screen unit with Bluetooth capability for a cell phone and the large screen is great for a backup camera. Installation and purchase ran $600 in San Diego. If you want to have the steering wheel controls work, ensure you do not discard your stock radio until it may be used to provide the CANBUS signal required. With an adapter harness, the Kenwood will power the stock speakers from the stock amp without an issue and without cutting wires. Good luck!
I have Bose too. You need the correct conversion harness, but nothing else fancy. I doubt there's much difference between a 2002 CLK 430 and a CLK 55, but consult with your installer. I did not do this myself but there's a great article for W208s in Volume 6, Number 1 of The Southwest Star Magazine. It's free, you just need to register.
Here's one way to do it. If you follow the article, your steering wheel controls will work too. Next issue we're covering the Sony AX8000. The AX8000 isn't available until next month. I favor Alpine equipment, but the Sony isn't bad. Although I'd take the AX7000 over the 8000. The 7000 has a better touchscreen, better amp, and you can run a subwoofer directly from the unit. The Alpine iLX 207 is my personal favorite, and the only thing it lacks is wireless Android Auto, which the Sony lacks too. Wireless Android Auto and CarPlay will drain the battery in a phone pretty quickly, but it's great for short trips. Longer than 45 minutes and you'll want to plug the phone in.
Whatever you buy, you may want to consider is a single DIN chassis with a fixed double DIN touchscreen -like the Alpine iLK207. That gives you room for the wires and converter boxed. And you'll need the room. Hope that helps
Here's one way to do it. If you follow the article, your steering wheel controls will work too. Next issue we're covering the Sony AX8000. The AX8000 isn't available until next month. I favor Alpine equipment, but the Sony isn't bad. Although I'd take the AX7000 over the 8000. The 7000 has a better touchscreen, better amp, and you can run a subwoofer directly from the unit. The Alpine iLX 207 is my personal favorite, and the only thing it lacks is wireless Android Auto, which the Sony lacks too. Wireless Android Auto and CarPlay will drain the battery in a phone pretty quickly, but it's great for short trips. Longer than 45 minutes and you'll want to plug the phone in.
Whatever you buy, you may want to consider is a single DIN chassis with a fixed double DIN touchscreen -like the Alpine iLK207. That gives you room for the wires and converter boxed. And you'll need the room. Hope that helps
There was a lot of good info in that write up. If I want to do the same set up in my clk430 (bose) what would be the Exact parts list ? I’m not sure what Bose adaptor I would need.
There was a lot of good info in that write up. If I want to do the same set up in my clk430 (bose) what would be the Exact parts list ? I’m not sure what Bose adaptor I would need.
That article listed every part we used to upgrade a 2002 CLK430 head unit. It also listed part numbers. The Bose audio adapter used was a PAC OEM 2. Those are no longer in production, but new ones are still available. I just saw one on eBay.
If you want a Bose converter thats still in production, call PAC-Audio (the manufacturer) on the west coast, or Crutchfield on the east coast. We source most of our hi-fi equipment through Crutchfield, and they will give you a very reasonable deal.
My factory radio was long gone when I got my car and the PO had installed a mediocre Boss double din unit that was on it's way out. I wasn't too concerned about any of the existing Bose stuff because I upgraded all my speakers, installed 2 amps and two 10" subs in the trunk. I wanted something that was on par with the Karmon Hardon set up in my Challenger and ended up blowing it out of the water.
I started searching Crutchfield and they'll tell you nothing double din fits W208. Navigation, hands free, etc was a must so I went with a Kenwood eXcelon DNX995S. FWIW I found it several hundred less on Amazon. Fits nice and looks good.
Here's one way to do it. If you follow the article, your steering wheel controls will work too. Next issue we're covering the Sony AX8000. The AX8000 isn't available until next month. I favor Alpine equipment, but the Sony isn't bad. Although I'd take the AX7000 over the 8000. The 7000 has a better touchscreen, better amp, and you can run a subwoofer directly from the unit. The Alpine iLX 207 is my personal favorite, and the only thing it lacks is wireless Android Auto, which the Sony lacks too. Wireless Android Auto and CarPlay will drain the battery in a phone pretty quickly, but it's great for short trips. Longer than 45 minutes and you'll want to plug the phone in.
Whatever you buy, you may want to consider is a single DIN chassis with a fixed double DIN touchscreen -like the Alpine iLK207. That gives you room for the wires and converter boxed. And you'll need the room. Hope that helps
I may be missing something but with the (ILX-207) fixed double DIN isn't your heater control (in the W208) obscured? At least it would in my 2002.
I may be missing something but with the (ILX-207) fixed double DIN isn't your heater control (in the W208) obscured? At least it would in my 2002.
It fits in the same spot as the original equipment radios. If your car came with a factory COMAND NAV system, pull it and you have a double DIN slot that can be filled. If your car came with the single DIN Becker, pull the head unit, pull the sleeve below it, remove the divider and you have a double DIN slot that can be filled. Once you get a mechless smart head unit, there's no going back.
Owning the publication, I'll just post the article here
Before beginning, I'd like to address a few rumors. Many people claim the head unit (radio) on a modern Mercedes-Benz cannot be replaced without considerable effort. Web gossip includes tales of dashboard error messages, a complete rewire is required, the entire audio system is linked by fiber optic cable, Bose amps and speakers are incompatible with aftermarket devices, the multifunction steering wheel controls will be lost, and that other systems may be negatively impacted if "the system" does see the factory radio.
In the installation outlined here
There are no error messages.
The existing factory wiring harness was used without cutting any Mercedes-Benz wires.
There is one fiber optic cable. That cable runs to the obsolete CD changer (audio CD technology is over 30 years old, it has been superseded by SSD devices).
The original equipment Bose amps and speakers were retained. They both sound and work as Bose Corporation had intended.
The multifunction steering wheel controls work
No other systems were impacted.
A different manufacturers amps and speakers could have been used. In that scenario, additional wiring would have been required. However, no more so than if an entirely new system were installed in any other car. The steering wheel control functions are independent of the amps, and would work in either situation.
After deciding which features were desired, the next things needed were the parts. The parts were purchased from Crutchfield, and the following part numbers are from their catalog.
Part Number - Description
500IDAX305 - Alpine IDA-X305 head unit
120701784 - Wiring harness adapter
12040VW12 - Antenna adapter
127SWICAN2 - PAC SWI-CAN2 CANBUS steering wheel radio control interface
127SWIJACK - PAC SWI-JACK JVC/Alpine/Clarion/Kenwood Steering Wheel Radio Control Interface
127OEM2 - PAC OEM-2 -audio output converter
Note: The SWI Jack only works with JVC, Alpine, Clarion, and Kenwood head units. Different PAC converters are required for other head unit manufactures.
The following is a schematic of the finished product.
Looking at the head unit, starting with the upper left connection, and going clockwise
The Alpine head unit has a female Motorola antenna jack. Mercedes-Benz uses a European male plug. An antenna adapter was used to complete the connection.
Next is the remote control port for the steering wheel controls. The PAC SWI Jack plugs into the remote control port on the head unit. The PAC SWI-CAN2 plugs into the PAC SWI Jack. The CANBUS wiring harness plugs into the PAC SWI-CAN2. The Steering wheel controls send a signal through the CANBUS wiring harness.
The remaining connections all go to the PAC OEM2. The PAC OEM2 converter box is the middleman between the head unit and the wiring harness adapter. To retain the Bose sound quality, a PAC OEM2 was used. Bose uses a balanced, differential signal interconnection. Most aftermarket audio systems use an unbalanced connection. The PAC converter box reads the unbalanced input and produces balanced output. The ground, constant power, switched power, speakers, and illumination lead are attached to the head unit on one side of the OEM2, and the wiring harness adapter on the other side.
Before touching the car, some pre-assembly was completed. For those who have previously installed a car radio, this is all straightforward. A crimping tool and blade connectors were used to attach the Alpine head unit wiring.
to the input side of the PAC OEM2.
The output side of the PAC OEM2 is then connected to the wiring harness adapter.
After making those connections, the wiring harness adapter is ready to be plugged into the Mercedes-Benz wiring harness. The PAC SWI Jack and SWI-CAN2 can now be set up.
The jack for the SWI Jack plugs into the head unit's remote control port.
PAC supplies a wiring harness that connects the PAC SWI Jack and SWI-CAN2.
The wiring harness from the SWI-CAN should be connected. The SWI-CAN instructions specify wire colors for the ground, switched power, and constant power. The wires for the CANBUS connection are very important. On the unit that was used in this installation -
White/Red is CANBUS positive
White/Black is CANBUS negative
There are at least six different CANBUS plugs used on Mercedes-Benz vehicles. The W208 CLK plug used in this installation looks like this.
Radio Shack supplied blade connectors (yes, that's how old the article was - use Amazon now) that matched the CANBUS slots. The connectors were attached to the SWI-CAN wires. This allowed the individual positive and negative CANBUS SWI-CAN wires to plug into the Mercedes-Benz wiring harness.
The SWI-CAN documents will have a connection schematic with 13 different CANBUS plugs. If you are working with a CANBUS plug that differs from the one on this page, one on the schematic will probably match.
The PAC SWI-CAN instructions made this a simple installation. Crutchfield also supplied their own vehicle-specific CANBUS installation docs.
At this point, work on the car can begin.Before removing the factory head unit, the storage compartment below the radio was slipped out. The radio removal tools were then inserted until they locked into place. At that point, the radio removal tools were used to pull the radio out of its slot.
There is plenty of room to slip the radio out, and then unplug the cables.
The rear of the radio that was replaced is shown below. This radio has five ports.
Port 1 is the CANBUS connection. It's used for the steering wheel controls.
Port 2 is used for the power and speakers.
Port 3 is used for speakers.
Port 4 is a fiber optic port for the CD changer.
Port 5 is for the antenna.
The new head unit simply replaces the old one. The new sleeve is installed. The USB cable is attached to the USB port on the new head unit. The USB cable was then run to a convenient location. On this particular head unit, the USB connection was used to read iPods, iPhones, and solid state drives. The OEM2, SWI-CAN, and SWI Jack are stacked in the spot below and behind the head unit.
The vehicle cables that used to plug into ports 2 and 3 were plugged into the wiring harness adapter. The cable that was plugged into port 2, was plugged into the top half of the wiring harness adapter. The cbale that was plugged into port 3 was plugged into the lower half of the wiring harness adapter.
The individual positive and negative SWI-CAN CANBUS wires to plug into the positive and negative CANBUS slots on Mercedes-Benz wiring harness.
The only things remaining are some minor programming for the steering wheel controls. Instructions are included with both the SWI Jack and the SWI-CAN. The programming instructions are very simple; setting two rotary dials, pushing some buttons, and turning the ignition off and on.
The SWI programming instructions have been intentionally omitted from this page because they may differ from one SWI kit to another, and/or PAC may change the instructions.
The antenna plugs into the Motorola-to-European adapter.
The fiber cable for the CD changer is left unplugged - with SSD, who needs CD's?
These are the parts used for this installation and yes, Crutchfield supplied almost everything.
In closing, I'm rarely on forums. The same is true for most of the people who write for The Southwest Star Magazine. The best way to reach any of us is by email at info@thesouthweststar.com
I went with the Sony ax7000. I haven’t installed the steering wheel controls yet. So before I install this head unit my pass side speakers where not working. After the new head unit was installed I’m still having the same problem. Could it be the amp? I tested the speakers out of the car and they work.
11-23-2019, 12:00 AM
I was unaware that you were involved in the publication.
