W211 Illuminated Door Sills Installed




If you are supposing that the power source has its own fuse then how does that help if the wire for the door sills is thinner ?




Whether the power demand is small or not is totally unimportant. Under conditions where there is a malfunction or severe damage you want the secondary items ( the mod mentioned) to be totally isolated from the larger power source (the wires giving power).
Without this safeguard you are
1/ Voiding your insurance
2/ Creating risk
Here is a tip on how 1/ works.
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Does your car have any modifications ? Yes or No ?
YES
What are they ?
Illuminated door sills.
Who did this work ?
I did
RESULT = Your insurance is declined.
How 2/ works
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Malfunction or damage to the car causes an unusual power demand at the moment of failure. Some electronics die with a wimper and other go out with a bang. It is advisable to restrict the latter from being possible.
Time for another mod then. Perhaps with another 50 cents worth of parts.
I was reading your post with very detailed instructions, I just purchased a set of sills for my CL600. The sills only came with a black and red wire set, no EL transformer. Are you familiar with these sills, do some come with no transformer? I may have been slighted, the entire kit was only about 100 bucks. One thing, the wires are run in series and they have two resistors in line. Do some run on DC current?
Lots of questions, thanks.
Ed
When I am up north I like to have the lights off so that when I open the door I can see where I am going..
The Best of Mercedes & AMG
Remove the rearmost clip, then the forward, and slide the entire unit towards the rear. There's a tab in the front that holds it from coming straight up.
Hope this helps!
Aceman
Just to make sure you're understanding me 100% correctly.
Each black plastic cover has 2 clips (if i remember correctly) and 1 tab. the tab is in the front. The clips are middle and rear. When pulling up on the cover, start at the rear clip, then the mid clip. After 2 clips are out, you'll notice the front of the cover still doesn't come up. At this point - you just pull the cover towards the rear of the car as the tab coming out of hte cover points to the front of the car and slips under the carpet liner.
Of course, this is the best I recall but hopefully it will spare you the breakage of a clip as I did.
Aceman

First, you have to remove your rear seat. There are two indents beneath your rear seat, one on each side (the blue arrow shows one of them). You just need to push the tap in and lift the seat up.
I will start with the passenger side:

After you removed your rear seat, you will see a sheet of black insulation material. Lift up the black insulation material and you will see that the panel next to your rear seat that needs to be removed is held down by a black nut. Remove the black nut and then pry out the small trim locking pin.



Pull out the panel next to your rear seat like shown in the picture. Also pull out your door trim, and the black plastic panel near your factory door sill.


Locate the door switch as shown in the picture. You want to connect the black wire from the EL transformer to the brown wire that is closer to the body panel like shown in the picture. Since the black wire from the EL transformer is not long enough, you need to get a piece of wire that is about 3 feet long (mine is the blue wire in the picture). Use a tap splice to connect the extension wire to the brown wire. Then use a butt splice connector to connect the extension wire to the black wire from the EL transformer.

Near the factory door sill, you will find a black wire channel like the one in the front driver side. You will find a red wire with orange strip. This was my choice of constant 12 volt power source. Use your test light to confirm since the color code of your wires might be different from mine. Use a tap splice and connect the red wire from the EL transformer to the red wire with orange strip. Connect the Illuminated door sill to the EL transformer and see if it works. If it does, just install it the same way you install the front door sills.
Now you can install the rear driver side sill. Everything is the same as the rear passenger side except the location of a constant 12V power source.

Lifting up the black insulation material on the driver side will reveal many wires. Again, use the test light to locate a constant 12V source. I used a solid red wire next to a red wire with yellow strip (Note: this red wire w/ yellow strip is not constant 12V).

Again, use a tap splice connector and connect the red wire from the EL transformer to this red wire as shown in the picture. Install the illuminated door sill like you did with the other ones. Put everything back in reverse order. This is it. Enjoy!
I need the pics for the rear as well. I used this thread to install the fronts but I've been too lazy to do the rears. Maybe I'll do them over the 4th of July holiday.
Whoever has the pics, would be so kind as to mail me a set to:
csdunn@hughes.net
Thanks.

Maybe after reading these posts amgkoo will put them back up


