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This is an account of how I accomplished installing these items. As usual, I'm not responsible for any issues that you may have installing such items after reading this account.
I really liked the look of this type of grill. There are more than a few sellers on eBay, and the pre/post facelift grille models are different/not interchangeable. I also found differing models of pre-facelift grilles of this type. Only one of them had a built-in plastic screen but it looked cheap. The others looked good, but without some kind of screening, I would worry about the radiator. Also, I wasn't enthused about the guts of the car being fairly visible from the front view.
I bought the "no mesh" model. I also bought an illuminated "fake Distronic" star. I am still mulling over if I will actually hook this up. More on that towards the end of this post. Due to the "one star rule", I also bought a replacement flat star for the hood and installed it.
I found this YouTube video by "MIKEYZ VLOGZ" where this guy installed mesh on his grille before installing the grille. I bought some to try out (it's not expensive, but beware, there are many styles). Generally, one piece is (barely) enough to do this job. One mistake that "Mickey" realized when he was done that he made it too small and should have tried to wrap it around the plastic instead of on top of it (obviously, not where it would show or interfere with installation) for maximum adhesion and strength. So I cut this out allowing for "bending over" the edge, bent it, and used up a good fraction of a new tube of Gorilla Glue installing it. Some people have used "hot glue" but I really can't recommend this. Hot glue never gets hard at room temperature and gets softer the hotter that it gets up to melting in a glue gun. Gorilla Glue (contact cement) actually melts the plastic underneath a bit as it dries. Lots of small ty-wraps were used in holding it down to the grille during gluing. It came out pretty well. I cut a hole in the mesh behind the star for the wire and ty-wrapped the wire to the mesh.
One thing I would recommend before doing this would be to look for light leakage from behind the illuminated star before installing the mesh (I didn't, and it's kind of late now). I would try to minimize it with brushed paint, etc. I managed to do an "OK" job but not as good as I could have done BEFORE installing the mesh.
So, I tried to install the grille. Well, just like everything "aftermarket", it didn't go all that well. You may see people install grilles on a pre-facelift W212 without removing the bumper cover but I don't think that is a good plan with this type of grille. I also added some complications with the mesh. The latch for the hood interferes with the installation of the grille if you have mesh over the brace near it. Even after clearancing this (making sure that my cut to the mesh would not be easily visible from the front), it was a very tough fit, and I didn't get the two side latches to completely latch. Again, many of these problems would probably not have happened had I taken the bumper cover off, mounted the grille and then reinstalled everything (which I need to do eventually anyway in order to replace the broken lower grille). I'm missing my assistant technician (wife) this week so that job will have to wait...
I'm torn on illuminating the star. I'm considering wiring it wither to the DRL or to one of the "running lights". I MAY wire up some transistor logic so that if the running lights AND headlights are on, it will NOT be illuminated, but if the running lights are on along, it will, otherwise it might be just a bit too showy. I really only want to see it when I unlock/lock the car at night. I'm not worried about overcurrent - the star runs comfortably well on a nine volt transistor radio battery!
Giving this a degree of difficulty is "difficult", ha ha - adding the mesh was not easy, and installation was very difficult without bumper cover removal; and then, the mesh added to this difficulty.
Will this mesh stay on a 150 miles an hour? Well, I'm not going to find that out, but I will find out if it stays on at 80
PS: Note that I have a "P1" car with no super high tech goodies. If you have one of these, you may have problems finding a truly "distronic compatible" star. I'd even be concerned that a supposedly compatible one not from MB itself might compromise operation even if it generates no codes or errors.
Wrap around mesh on grille. Slot cut to allow for hood latch. Installed. Detail of installed mesh.
Last edited by strife; 05-04-2022 at 09:19 PM.
Reason: Can't read, write, spell too good
I bought a black 57mm all-plastic star, about $35, 0008171701 which is common on eBay, It appeared to be genuine but does NOT "fit completely inside of" the original divot. However, it DOES fit the raised curvature/line of the hood properly (some 57MM's don't). Others have apparently made smaller stars that fit in the divot. The size of the 57MM units does seem a bit large to my eye but AFAIK that is the "correct" replacement.
For reasons that I can't explain (possibly aftermarket/fakes?), some are entirely made of plastic and "squeeze" and some have actual spring mechanisms on the back.
05-04-2022, 02:38 PM
