Hi everyone,
I have a 2003 Mercedes-Benz W211 E55 AMG and I’ve been dealing with headlight issues for quite some time. My original bi-xenon headlights (with cornering function) had very poor output — yellowed lenses and most likely burned reflectors — so I decided to upgrade to facelift headlights, again with cornering.
After a lot of searching, I managed to find two facelift headlights (from different sellers), and luckily I also found two original headlight control modules. I opened both headlights, restored the reflectors, repaired some damaged wiring (a few cracked wires), installed new lenses, and overall the light output is now great.
While the headlights were still off the car, I noticed something odd — I couldn’t activate the high beam shutter with direct 12V. When I applied 12V to connector S1 (Pin 1 = ground, Pin 3 = high beam), the inner high beam bulb turns on, but there is no “click” from the shutter and no projector movement. I tested another facelift headlight without cornering, and there the shutter works perfectly with the same method. From what I read online, this might be because the shutter requires the module under the headlight and CAN communication from the car, so I didn’t dig further at that stage.
When it came time for installation, I started with the left headlight. First, I installed a facelift headlight without cornering just to test things, and everything worked perfectly. Then I installed the facelift cornering headlight, and immediately noticed that the shutter still wasn’t working.
Thinking it could be a CAN issue, I wired the following from connector S2 to the car’s CAN bus (tapped into a connector in the driver-side door sill):

• Pin 4 (green)
• Pin 5 (white)

→ No change.
I then remembered that the original setup uses an HRA (headlamp range adjustment) module, so I disconnected it to avoid possible signal conflicts, but again there was no change. Before disconnecting it, I scanned it with an older diagnostic tool and found two current errors related to communication faults:

• Fault in communication with component E1n2 (power module)
• Fault in communication with component E1n3 (power module)

After that, I tried swapping the module under the headlight:

• Another used module
• A third, brand new aftermarket module

→ No difference in behavior.
At this point I thought maybe the right headlight acts as a master, so I repaired its wiring and installed it as well. The result was the same — the shutter still wasn’t working. Additionally, I noticed another issue on the right side: the parking light was blinking every few seconds and eventually turning off, but I decided to deal with that later.
I also ran CAN wiring for the right headlight (to a nearby CAN connection point), but again there was no change. While the cornering headlights were installed, I tried to activate/test the adaptive (cornering) function through diagnostics, but the headlights didn’t move at all, so I assume the cornering function is not working either.
Since I needed the car ready for inspection, I temporarily installed facelift headlights without cornering. With those, the shutter works correctly. The left headlight leveling doesn’t seem to respond, but I’m not too concerned since this is only temporary. However, even with this setup, the parking light behaves oddly — the left one works fine, but the right one keeps blinking intermittently. As a workaround, I modified the wiring and added a bulb behind the headlight, and now it stays on constantly.
Later on, I found some information that there are three types of facelift cornering headlights:

• For cars with Airmatic
• For cars with rear air suspension only (wagons)
• For cars without air suspension

This is supposedly identified by a third connector on the left headlight (above S2) and the number of pins.
In my case:

• The left headlight HAS this third connector
• The headlight itself has 4 pins
• The connector I have (not originally from that headlight) uses only 3 pins:
• Pin 1 – brown/black
• Pin 2 – black/yellow
• Pin 3 – empty
• Pin 4 – white/blue

At this point I’m stuck — the shutter does not work on either cornering headlight, the cornering function does not work, CAN wiring changes made no difference, multiple modules have been tested, and there are communication errors reported (at least on the left side).
I would really appreciate any help, ideas, wiring diagrams, or guidance on whether this is a CAN issue, coding issue, incompatibility between components, or something else.
Thanks in advance!

P.S. The picture is after installing the non cornering lights and i just enjoyed the new look