For over a year i had the "corning headlight deactivated" error, this was being caused by a faulty motor in the headlight unit.

I could have deactivated the cornering function on the headlight but i actually liked it so i was about to replace the headlight (£675 from MB), but i read it could be repaired, so i thought id give it a go.

So off to German ebay where i manged to source a broken headlight unit for £50, hella part 1YL 158696-02 which you cannot buy even direct from Hella.

Unplug the 2 big plugs behind the headlight and removed the bolts and the headlight was out



After removing the light we have to remove everything theat can be removed, screws, clips, control units the lot

Remove


remove


remove the rubber drainage hoses


Unclip the cable on the ignitor, then twist the ignitor and pull it off, then remove the xenon bulb, and all other bulbs and holders


remove bottom fixing bracket


unclip the plastic cover and remove


Then carefully with a screwdriver pry off all the plastic clips around the lens






Then comes the scary part, preheat an oven to 100C, stick the light unit in and start praying!, seriously, keep checking every coupls of minutes for about 6 minutes, by this time the glue holding the lens will have warmed up enough to allow you to pry it off.

as i was reading this procedure from a US forum, i forgot cent and ferenhiet, so i had a soft headlight unit when it came out and the glue was very runny and went everywhere! hence i didnt have enough hands to take the pics

once lens is pryed off undo ths connector on the left


and this one at the bottom which fits into the ballast\control units


you are then left with the main xenon lens unit





As the replacement i had a LHD one, the lens cutoff is different, so i had to swap the lens frame over also, i then installed the fixed lens unit and put it on the car to test, it looked like something out of terminator!



NO MORE ERROR!

i put it on STAR and carried out the left and right test and it worked perfectly!

after this I cleaned up the mess on the lens where the black sealant went everywhere and bought a tube of the mercedes sealant which is used all over your car for gaskets etc.


removed all the bits off the light unit again and stuck it back in hte oven ot soften the bonding agent again, took it out and stuck the lens back on. I then resealed the light unit with the mercedes sealant.

I then put everything back together again

as an added step, i had to repair the lugs (as doofus had melted them in the oven), MB do a nifty repair kit which has all 3 lugs, i needed two.



i sawed the old melted lugs off and srewed the new ones back in



fitted the light back onto the car and 5 months later it works flawlessly, hope the above helps

 

Wow nice job!!!

 

Great work! A real popular swap for these projectors is replacing the stock fresnel projector lense for a clear one. It really enhances the performance of the projector/xenon system and gives you a razor sharp cut off line. Since you have already managed to completely disasemble you should give it a go next time you feel so brave.

I have a spare set of E63 lamps I'll be doing a lense swap in soon.

 

wow all that work... am glad i dont have that option

 

Coming from a vehicle that had Honda s2000 projectors, the projectors in the 55 are really lacking due to the fresnel lenses (as mentioned above)

I'm thinking about doing this mod to enhance the sharpness of the cutoff:

http://customlightz.com/?p=p_169&sNa...-lens-swap-e55

It's a great cheap mod, and the effects will be quite noticeable, especially if you bend the cutoff shield and enhance the colorband..

 

I know its been a while since you posted this. Could you tell if the gimbal/pivots could be cleaned and lubed when you had it open? While I don't get an error, what happens is that when it is really cold outside, one or both will stick in a downward direction. After headlamps can warm up and I shut off the car and restart, they will go back to normal. It's done this since the car was 2 years old and it is now 13 years old. Still does it and it is only intermittent. The stealership was never any help on this one. I'm getting ready to put new lenses on, so I figured this might be the time to have a look at this.

Scotty