Hi Everybody,

The couple past weeks, I noticed that my steering lock would sometimes not immediately disengage when inserting the key in the ignition. One time it took me 10 minutes of inserting the key before it unlocked. My friend also has a W212 and in his car, the steering lock was stuck and he couldn't get it to work anymore. He had to call ''a guy'' who has a service to replace the ESL for a rebuilt one for about €400. I wanted to get ahead of this repair, as the motor that becomes stuck only costs about €12.

So, I watched a bunch of youtube video's about this ESL. Taking it out is some work, but not difficult. There's plenty of information to be found on taking out the steering wheel and the necessary interior trim. Also taking out the ESL is doable. But then came the hard part for me. Once you have the ESL out, there are 4 spring-pins in the side of the casing that need to be removed in order to open it.



Now, there are some video's in which people just tap in a 4-sided pick tool, or a number 5-6 torx key with some force, and they can turn the pins out. See picture below.

But I just could not get this to work. So I took a different route.

I took a 3mm metal drill and drilled the 4 pins out. for 2 of them I drilled them out completely, for the other 2, the drill bit ''grabbed'' the pin and I could pull the pins out.
Okay, so now I had 2 3mm holes and 2 partly drilled 3mm holes. So I could not put the pins back anymore as they have a smaller diameter.
I bought 4 M4x6 set screws with hexagonal socket.
First, I had to take out the motor, gears and other parts. (important because aluminum shavings will go everywhere)


Then drill all the holes all the way through with the 3mm drill. Unfortunately no photo but here's the idea.

After drilling through all the holes I could get my thread tap in far enough. I tapped it to M4. When tapping to M4 you actually need to drill a 3,3mm hole but I only had a 3mm drill. So I had to tap the hole very gently. Aluminum is soft, be carefull!

The 4 holes in the cover of the also needed to be drilled larger to 4mm.

I cleaned everything with some brake cleaner and I regreased all the gears and stuff. Very important.

After cleaning and reassembly I could get my set screws in far enough. I used some loctite to secure them in place and now they look like this.


I hope this information could be of help to someone in the future.

Best regards from the Netherlands!