The driver side seatbelt presenter is making a loud "grinding" or "thumping" noise when it extends and retracts. Sounds like something is repeatedly slipping. Is this DIY fixable?

I swear my car is disintegrating as we speak.

It is fixable as a DIY. The extender is one part, and it includes the motor and the plastic arm. The cost is about $350 retail, $250 at parts.com.

This unit "Belt feeder, Left seat MB# 2098600182" was superseded due to issues.

the new number is

Belt feeder, Left seat
MB# 2098600582
http://www.pelicanparts.com/cgi-bin/...ion=2098600582

whunter@pelicanparts.com

.

Thanks. Is it a nightmare removing the rear panels on a coupe?

Not a nightmare, but a bit tedious:

http://benzbits.com/w209/RemoveSidePanellingCoupe.pdf

Thanks. I will give it a go this afternoon hopefully. The motor seems to work fine, but the sliding mechanism probably has some issue. Maybe it can be repaired.

So as suspected, the motor itself is fine but the the sprocket that drives the arm has a tooth missing. Since only one tooth is in contact at any given time with the arm, it will skip. Silliness.

The only "hmm" part of the repair is likely to be the removal of the upper seatbelt mount point to the frame of the car, which is required to remove the presenter assembly. This thing is held on really really securely. I haven't tried with a ratchet yet.

Obviously will have to be re-tightened just as well. Does anyone by chance know the torque spec of that bolt?

Looks like 30Nm:

http://benzbits.com/w209/RemoveSeatBeltPresenter.pdf

Excellent. Thanks.

So I have got it figured out. Bought a used motor off ebay with a good sprocket for $40.

For future reference, you will need a Torx T45 to get the seat belt mount points on and off. I had a socket bit.

A screwdriver bit is possible, if you have a decently big screwdriver handle, but in the interest of making sure it gets put back on there nice and tightly (it is the seatbelt after all) a socket bit might be a better idea.

EDIT: I should also mention that there are two motor part numbers

RIGHT: Bosch 0 390 201 968
LEFT: Bosch 0 390 201 967

However from what I can tell, the motor appears to be symmetric. It may be possible to reverse the drive part relative to the housing and "flip" the motor, but I haven't tried this. In any case, the sprockets are the same on both sides.


So far I have switched the sprockets on the left and right sides (so the bad one is on the psgr side now instead) - so as to keep my sanity when I drive it. The car was a bit finnicky after I did it, seemed to disable both drive motors and nothing would work. Took the key out for a while and the system apparently reset itself. All good now and awaiting my replacement sprocket.

EDIT 2: Also, you could tell that the bad sprocket was getting worse. The teeth adjacent to the missing one were starting to chip and get shorter. So would need to get it done sooner or later.

So my parts arrived today and I got it done. Pretty quick, maybe 15 minutes (would have been less but I was taking photos at the same time.)

I have attached a PDF of the entire process here. I'd suggest this might be something worth filing away in the Wiki but don't know how to put it there, so I'll wait for someone to catch it.

EDIT: credits correction in the PDF.

Very nice write-up!