Clkboi

Let me apologize for not taking a lot of pictures. I did not think i was going to make this DIY but i noticed no one has really tried this on the W209 so i am going for it!

Reason for me doing this is because i have spent a lot of money on the LED bulbs and they kept going off in 2-3 months. Its always the side connectors that go loose and you get that flickering issue.

A friend of mine has these types of License plate LED on his W203 and they are super bright because they use 18 LED's. He has them on for 2 years now with 0 issues.

I checked the shape out and thought; What the hell they look close so ill give it a shot.

Ordered this set on eBay and they came in today!

Came to find out they were a perfect fit and they work great too. The sellers of these do not advertise them for the W209 but apparently they should.

I will try to explain the best i can with the little amount of pictures that i have.

The set i purchased from eBay:



Link to purchase them:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/License-Plate-SMD-LED-Light-Error-Free-Mercedes-W203-C230-C240-C280-AMG-C32-C55-/140860789591?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories &hash=item20cbf51357&vxp=mtr

Now do not get confused with these other ones as they wont fit. Do not buy them!:





OK so time for some DIY. Again sorry for not posting too many pics:

First unscrew you OEM license light plastic covers. They have two screws on each side.

Remove your license plate. You might have 2 or 4 screws depending on preference.

Notice this little gray metal pin in the middle. We will get to that later! ( look at the circle)



Open your trunk and start taking out the plastic clips. Best way, is to take the head out first and than easily take the pin out. I used a flat head screw driver for this.



Unscrew the plastic plate in the middle: 2 screws



Make sure you get all the clips out including the ones on the plastic covers on the side



Unclip the belts on the plastic covers. You can have 2-4 on each side. I noticed all cars are different.




Carefully remove the trunk cover now!

Careful to not pull too hard. The emergency trunk release button (green flashing button) is connected with a short cable. Disconnect the cable as soon as you are able to see it!

My model has the automatic trunk but some don't. If you do than disconnect the cable for that too as soon as you see it. If you don't than the cover should be off at this point.

Now you will probably take a look around and waste some time. Happened to me. Lots of cables there so yeah

You will notice the light housing if you look inside. First i thought it would be easy to just unclip it. Picture from a w203 but same thing on ours:




After i spent an hour trying to remove them from the inside or the outside i understood it just wasn't possible.
Take it from me you cant so don't bother as you will just break stuff! You can go ahead and remove the cable on them though.

After you unplug the cables i would take your new housings and test them. Make sure they are working properly. No errors or flickering!

Next we will remove this big guy here: Look at the rectangle. This will give us very easy access to the housing.



Now in order to remove this go to the side of the trunk and notice these two screws on each side: Look at the top circles and my weird drawing:



After the screws are out remove the plastic part in the middle. Mine had some double side tape on it for extra snug fit so put some work on it.


After you have removed both sides we will go back to that silver pin we first mentioned:




On the inside of the trunk you can see where that pin leads to. Its a screw held by a bolt. Remove that working from the inside of the trunk.


Make sure you have removed all mentioned above and now pull down on the plastic piece.

It is held by 4 plastic pins. Two on the corners and two in the middle. Just use caution and not too much force. It should come out very easy.

Here is the piece out:



You will notice a lot of dirt has been hiding under that cover. Might as well clean it while you are at it:
So much for waxing my car lol

Not my car but my towel! Mine was even dirtier.






If your housings are unplugged you will notice they are very easy to be removed now. Take them off and put the new ones in.
Plug the cables back and make sure they fit snug. Test one more time if you are paranoid like me.



BRIIIIIIIGHT



Install in the reverse order and enjoy you long lasting LED's



Also i found these cables in my trunk which i have no idea what they are for?! Anyone here knows?

Male and Female pins on this one: GPS maybe?



Also this blue 3 dotted pin cable:



Hope you guys enjoy it. I know its not the best DIY but ill be available to answer any questions you might have.

Clkboi

Did not want to make a new thread for this but i also put the AMG rear bumper on and painted my exhaust black.

If anyone is selling a diffuser in the 300 range send me a PM

Kevwood

Nice write up pal

NardoNZ

are they proper white or are they blue leds? in your photo it seems slightly blueish, is that just the photo, or is it actually like that? I'm very interested in this set

waveterrorist

fair amount of work there...what if one of those fails?

i too went through a fair amount of LED's that croaked quickly but finally found some with really fat heatsinks that have been working flawlessly for many months now and lots of trunk slams. i think they were less than $5 each on egay and they are plenty white bright. unfortunately i am unable to provide a link but given they take about 4 minutes to replace, at least in my view they are a better way to go

NardoNZ

if u cannot provide a link your comment is pretty useless, as many of us have been trying this. CLKboi has gone through the effort to provide us with a proper solution and it's great that you can come up with something even better, but don't just spray around that this is a lot of work and your solution is better.

Please try to find the link, and maybe a pic of your leds on. Im interested go see what they are like.

waveterrorist

boi could not be more appropriate

Newjd2

Cool man...great job and write up as usual...



Angelo

Clkboi

If one of them fails than yes i do understand its going to be a lot of work again. Second time its always easier though.

Are you talking about the silver heatsinks in the back?



If so that's what i had previously and they lasted about 5 months until started flickering.

Like i said only reason i bi the bullet on these is because a friend has them on his W203 for 2 years now with no issues!

Clkboi

Thank you sir

Any idea what those cables are in the trunk though Kev?

Clkboi

They are white. Similar to the 6K Hids. I think you call it Cool White color temperature

iPhone camera likes to add a blue tint all the time

sleepyheadzzz

i bought 10 of the led bulbs on ebay for 20 bux....i just change em out every 6 months LOL

Clkboi

LMAO i guess that's an option too haha

midnight AMG

yea..but are yours HYPER BRIGHT white??

eddieo45

Why bust on Clkboi? He didn't dis you.

Clkboi

CLK550 $wagger

Got mine in today! I'll post a few pictures after I install them tonight!

Clkboi

Awesome man, let us know if you get stuck!

CLK550 $wagger

Ok will do! I actually decided to start now... haha I couldn't wait!

CLK550 $wagger

Damit! Only one of the LEDs work! So now I have to wait for a replacement... ):

Clkboi

Ah no way that suxs man! I hate when stuff like this happens

CLK550 $wagger

I know it freaking sucks... hahah as I write this Im doing the "walk of shame" putting it all back together without the new lights installed. Its alright though next time it will take me half the time to take apart.

Not to mention I bleed a little for the project. (Needless to say you were right about not be able to take them out without taking the metal piece off. haha I had to try because it was so freaking tempting!)

Clkboi

Friend of mine did his today as well

Clkboi

lmaooo

Saaboteur

Bringing back this thread from the dead, or half death anyway.

Last fall, I noticed the LED bulbs I had in the stock housings on my C55 weren't working as nicely as I wanted them too. Or rather, one was fine, but the other was intermittent. Very annoying. Stumbled upon this thread and ordered the LED housings off eBay days later.

I also used the DIY throughout when I finally got around to installing them last weekend. Very helpful.

The only tip I could add is that instead of prying up on the trunk trim fasteners with a screwdriver, to use the actual tool made for the purpose instead. Here's an example:

http://www.princessauto.com/pal/prod...oval-Plier-Set

Princess Auto is a Canadian retailer, and they have plenty of specialty tools like that for reasonable prices (as opposed to, say, buying Snap-On, which isn't feasible for a shade-tree hobbyist mechanic). With one of the pliers used, all of the trunk fasteners popped out immediately, no damage, easily reusable.

I also used them last fall for some work on my wife's LR3. At first I felt the purchase price was a lot - but the aggro saved in not having busted trim fasteners is definitely worth it.