Heguli

I did verify that there's nothing wrong with the rear suspension itself. Now that I knew which wires need to be hot when power is on, I took them out from the connector, and made a jumper wire (violet) which I then connected to the RD/WH wire on a pin 20. Heard a faint click from the rear of the car, then went to look the cluster and no fault notification!! Connected scanner, found the suspension and everything is as it should be. Great! So the issue is either the wiring or the front SAM.

Heguli

Maybe I'm lucky and it's just a connector that has fallen off from I6 when I installed front SAM.

Heguli

Well, like I suspected....



At the same time I was happy to find the issue and greatly pissed to find the issue. Had not even fallen off, I just missed that connector when I replaced the front SAM. Sooo simple, but then again, without the diagram konigstiger provided, searching the issue would've been more or less shooting to the dark.

Also got the correct seatbelt retractor to the passenger side, so there are not too many problema to solve anymore. I hope.

Heguli

​​​​​​Was going to check the rear light issue deeper yesterday, but it got really late so I gave up. I did however, clear codes from all the modules, and noticed that rear SAM has code only from the outer tail lights, as should. Code being open circuit, and as I looked the connections on the module, there are some empty slots, and it came to my mind that I possibly have something connected wrong. I believe wiring being good, as the turn signal works, also the tail light bulb is good (this I had checked earlier). But I'll check contuniyty of the wiring, just to be sure.

After clearing codes, instrument cluster has only SRS message (along with SRS light), but as soon as I turn on the lights, I get message from all the rear lights malfunctioning. Oh yeah, just remembered, I couldn't erase the cluster codes. Too much happening all over the car, can't keep everything in my head!

But there's nothing too much preventing to take the car to safety inspection and back on the road: SRS coding, outer tail lights, front parking lights (led's flashing), and left xenon module. And check engine light.

CaliBenzDriver

It's pretty hard to wire a SAM wrong. The connectors are color spotted and can mechanically only be inserted in their specific slot. You can go out of your way make that false but it won't come naturally.

If you don't care for live scoping circuits, you can measure resistance (disconnected circuits only) or DC voltage in live circuits.
​​​​​​​Then PWM commands comes in and nothing checks out without a circuit diagram. DC tools are limited with digital signals.

Back to tracing circuits with the process of elimination.
🤞

Heguli

Actually, there is a chance of misconnection. There are these four slots marked green:



and I have connector only for two of them. All of them have the same mechanical coding, except the right one, that has a small difference, but accepts same connector as the other three. Though they all being marked green, might indicate that they have same output. Next time I work with it, I'm gonna see what happens when I change them from 8 & 18 to 10 & 11.

CaliBenzDriver

GRN slot are equals

I believe these slots to be 100% identical: same color same key same common circuit.

This being a previously owned replacement module... compare it to original for wiring slot discrepancies: MISSING PINS in blank slots...

What are you trying to resolve now?

Heguli

I'm going to pull the rear SAM tomorrow, and see if there is any water damage. I found the wiring diagram for the rear lights, and it seems that those green slots are not even for lights. Lights are in connector 14 (pins 4 and 10, BK/RD for the tail lights), and it sits on lowest corner on the rear SAM, so there might be some corrosion. Maybe. But I'll see it tomorrow. Takes forever to check small things, as the car is at my workplace.

Heguli

Took me couple of days to have time to look at the tail light issue.
-continuity on a BK/RD wire = yes.
-pulled rear cover from the SAM = no signs of corrosion.

Then I pulled the wires from the connector 14 (had only 4 wires; tail lights and turn signals on both sides), and reversed them. Meaning turn signal was tail light and vice versa. What you know, I got tail lights (amber ones). So the SAM output on pins 4 and 10 are okay. Weird things is, I had no turn signal, but the bulb did work, as I played with the wiring and connected left tail light wire to pin 7, it was bright like brake light.

Tail light lamp has only one filament, but according to rear SAM information on previous post it serves as tail lamp, and stop light. So the question is, when the tail lamp is on, it gets low voltage so the light output equals to 5 watt bulb? But when you hit the brakes, bulb gets full voltage and equals 21 watt bulb? I forgot to test that when I had the wires reversed with turn signal. I'll do that tomorrow. Maybe the bulbs are bad after after all?
What is the wattage of the light bulbs? I tried to look it up, but couldn't find the answer.

I had the bulb holder out, and I was trying to take off the bulb. Turns out they are not replaceable, you have to buy the whole holder. Stupid design!

Heguli

I was greatly annoyed when I found out why tail lights do not work! Here is the left one, even though I broke it, I manage to make it work for a while:



I was so focused to the left side, why it doesn't work even though wiring and bulb are good, that I forgot to look the right side. There was a broken bulb. I made this contraption to both sides to check the function:



And my thinking was right about how one filament works as a tail light and a brake light. There is ~4 volts when the tail lights are on, and 12 volts when brakes are applied.

What I don't get, is why both lights go out when only one is broken? After all, they both have their own output on the R-SAM.

And yeah, I was blind when I asked about bulb wattage. You could even see it on the previous post picture. But here's the better picture:



They are bit tricky to change, and it might make sense to buy the whole holder, but I'm going to change just those two bulbs.

Heguli

Now that rear lights are figured out, I took apart front end:



This one doesn't answer when scanner is calling. It's the same both left and right:



Then I tackled the parking light issue. They flash randomly when lights are on and engine running. Didn't find any info of them from interwebs. Only thing I found out if the 5 watt bulbs are changed to leds, they'll need to be coded.

Under the high beam is that metal plate:



P/N 164 968-00:



Circuit board:



With a reflector:



Circuit board looked like it may not like if I introduce 12 volts to it. Luckily I had measured that tail lights have 4 volts, so I wired leds to there. And both of them work:



So my thinking is that they need to be coded, as the front/passenger SAM might be from the car that didn't have led parking lights. SAM sends operating voltage to lights, but when the required circuit load is not achieved, it's shut down, and tried again 10 or so seconds later.

Heguli

That "new" instrument cluster I bought had nasty black spots on the gauges. Insteads of trying to clean them off, I took off the broken circuit board from the old cluster, and replaced with the new one:



Now I have this issue. I can't recall if I had this issue previously, where the left side is dimmer. Is it possible I misplaced one of those thin plastic wiring strips (guessing the narrow one):

Heguli

Except I won't change just those two bulbs. Couldn't locate PH16W bulbs, only PW16W. They have different plastic plug, but I might have made it to work. Then it came to pricing. Bulbs alone were ~30€/piece, x2, + shipping. Whereas whole assembly was 54€/piece x2 with free shipping, so the price difference wasn't that huge anymore. It's plug'n play and done for the rear lights.

CaliBenzDriver

What you measured as 4V supply is likely a 12V PWM voltage, not a constant DC. Most multimeter don't measure exotic wave forms outside sinusoidal 50/60Hz AC.

As to how both bulb go out together... this suggest they are supplied by a serial circuit on-board of the Rear-SAM. one bulb output feeds the other's input...

To sense when bulbs are toast'd, a serial shunt resistance is used to measure the current passing through.
Less voltage means less current means less load, means bad bulb circuit. People who replace grandma's bulbs with LED often need to add a dummy load to trick the bulb monitoring circuit.
As far as personal choice I've learned to enjoy the simplicity of the .50¢ filament bulbs compared to wildely overpriced 25¢ LED.

I can see upgrading the headlights to powerful driving LED, but taillights I think can be far less troublesome with basic bulbs.

Heguli

I was driving behind the facelift W211 the other day, and on a stop light I was looking the rear lights that were acting weirdly. As the driver was standing on a brake pedal, inner brake lights and 3rd brake lights were lit, and outer tail lights were flashing every 2-3 seconds. Outer lights were either some aftermarket led units, or later W211 lights that were not coded to the car. As the driver released the brake, tail lamps quit flashing. I assume there was tail light message on the cluster.

Heguli

Got this done a while ago. I was looking for parts all over the interwebs, ended up buying from almost local dealer, and got genuine Mercedes parts. Some that I found abroad looked to be made in China or so, and after shipping cost difference wasn't much.



So the lights are done, except the front parking lights have to be coded. And even though the headlights work, right one is quite dim compared to the left. Really can't see the difference in the picture but still, right:



And left:



Those lenses need polishing, though.

Heguli

When I bought the car, I noticed that parking brake has little to zero grip. I was going to adjust it for the upcoming yearly safety inspection, but unfortunate things happened. So yesterday I went and pulled the rear disks to see the condition of the parking brake shoes. Turns out, there was nothing to adjust on either side:



Also the left disk was a goner, inside was heavily grooved:



Right side wasn't that bad, but I ordered new set of disks, pads and shoes, and new wear indicator as it was such a cheap part, would hate to break the old one and then in the middle of rebuild run to the parts store to get a new one. After I had place the order, and paid it, I noticed that slide pins are frozen on both sides. Not going to try to revive them, going to get a new set of those too.

CaliBenzDriver

The wasted rear disc surface says something about unreleased pads.... to that part list you should add calipers and flex hoses too.

I bet your old pistons are rusted in, the piston bore surface gets pitted and the old tiny square seal falls apart like a chewing gum - Nothing can be saved !

These caliper parts are made sensitive to the water condensation that is heavier than brake fluid. Water causes rust by accumulating at the lowest point around piston seal.

For everyone else: the scheduled "Brake flush" early on is what's supposed to help prevent moisture damage.

Heguli

I'm quite confident that my issue is those seized slide pins. I had to use channel locks to push the pistons in in order to get the calipers off due to lip on a worn disc, and I used very little effort to do that. So I believe the calipers are good to go. But when I get the new parts and pull apart the brakes again, I'll take a closer look to pistons.

Heguli

Didn't take closer look to a pistons, as I didn't want to risk braking the dust boots. Got a new set of slide pins, and when takinh apart the old ones, I noticed that I could've get away just cleaning and greasing them.
Took some time to dial in the parking brake, those links at the end of a cable were rusted solid, some persuating with penetrating oil and induction heat broke them loose, and after that I spend some time figuring how the auto adjuster works. Manage to drop that small spring kind of thing from the adjuster to the floor and straight to sewer. F**k! Oh well, I'll source new from somewhere, but at least now I have parking brake that grabs evenly, 8% difference and 2kN/wheel.

Heguli

One step forward, two steps back. Now my lift gate won't lock. I had that intermittent issue prior lightning strike, but now it stopped working comletely. Thought it would be a mechanical issue, but when I took the lock apart enough to see inside of it, looks like it's more of a electrical issue. There is a lever that moves via motor, and it seems that motor doesn't go all the way to a closed position, so the lever keeps the lock open. When I moved the lever with a screw driver, mechanical part of the lock worked just fine.

Green death right there:



One pin completely gone, it's stuck indside of the connector plug. Those locks (A1647400635) are readily available, OEM used ones are more expensive than a new aftermarket ones. Just need to get new pins to the plug.

Heguli

Haven't updated thsi thread for a long time! I've driven my car to date about 19 tkm/12k miles after I got most of the issues fixed.

So, looks like the tailgate was the last issue here, which I repaired with an aftermarket lock assembly. No issues with that so far, unfortunately that same green death that broke the lock assembly connector, broke the wire from the rear outer handle switch connector. Now I can open the liftgate only from the drivers door. And there is an issue, too! One flip, cargo curtain rolls up and lift systen "loads", second flip and gate opens. Thought it would be on the hydraulic side, but actual issue is that lift gate is slightly crooked. Noticed that when I park the car on a slight incline, liftgate wotks just fine. And when the hadnle switch worked, gate opened without issues. Just minor inconvience, but I should fix that switch connector.

There were only two problems that I had to fix before safety inspection, SRS-light and front parking lights. Took some time to find someone who could do some programing, and actually found a local guy who managed do whar was needed. SRS-light is gone, that system works. And left parking light, it was simple coding to the drivers SAM, but for some reason we didn't find it from the passenger SAM. Need to look that up some day.

So I took my car to safety inspection, and they found some things to fix. Obviosly the RH parking light, and RH xenon which I had noticed being dim. But then there were rear brakes that were dragging really bad, I drove just a few miles and rear discs were so hot you could've cook eggs on them!! Also at the front, diagonal suspension control arms had loose balljoints.
Replaced both rear calipers, RH xenon and all four lower suspension control arms. After alignement, it was really nice to drive.

Then came really cold winter, which caused some major issues. First I lost the battery, which actually worked exceptionally well given it had gone to only 3 volts for two months, two years earlier. Then I lost glow plugs, and controller. Replaced those and all was fine, never failed to start since then.

When I swap the tires from winter to summer. I noticed some play on the drivers tie rod end. Bummer. But when I lifted the passenger front up, I found the lower ball joint being completely busted. The one that is on the knuckle. Also right upper ball had a smidge of a play. So I replaced both tie rod ends, both upper and lower ball joints. Lesson learned, replace everyting at once on a W/S211! Still needs an alignement, but it drives quite nicely even though I just eyeballed the tie rods. Also got camber bolts, didn't like the stance life look it got after control arm replacement.

Last thing I replaced was the motor and transmission mounts. Left motor mount collapsed couple of weeks ago, and it was horrible to drive. At least reverse and neutral caused it feel like a old tractor, and eventually driving forward had some rattling and shaking. Now, with the new mounts, it's silky smooth. Realized that mounts were bad from the day I bought it, never been that smooth to drive!

Still needs the radio and Parktronic. And the instrument cluster don't show the kilometers, just dashes, that's also one thing to fix. But other that that, no electrical issues have arised so far.