i have h&r's that i bought used off a 208 clk55 owner. he told me he left the stock shocks (bilsteins) on the car and that it was fine. is it really all that necessary to change the shocks with H&R's?

 

It really depends how low your car will be after installing the H&R's. If it's a noticable drop, then i'd recommend chaging your shocks also. if you keep your stock shocks and lower your car, the ride of your vehicle will progressively get worse and will start to ride like a boat, eventually blowing the shocks.

 

henry is correct. If you went with the H&R sport springs, that means your car lowered a lot, which means your stock shocks are getting worked too hard. Eventually, you'll end up blowing the stock shocks. By changing to Bilstein or Koni, you will NOT lower your car any more. You will just have a little stiffer suspension.

 

This is the first time I hear someone saying if you change aftermarket shocks on a car and with lowering springs, your car will not lower anymore. Hahahaha....this is so funny!!!

clkal: do you have any idea of what "shocks" do???

 

What is so funny about what i stated? I said that a car will be lowered the same amount if the owner decideds just to change the springs, compared to changing out the springs PLUS the shocks. The shocks do NOT change the height of the car. My car stayed the same height when i went from stock shocks to bilsteins.

HARRIS : i know you have extensive knowledge of Mercedes, but what you asked me (do you have any idea of what shocks do), you are saying that all what shocks do is lower cars. That does not make sense.

 

So today I installed the HID conversion headlights I bought from Fishcake on eBay.

The good news is that they were packaged really well and looked good on inspection. As Rodney predicted, I am getting good at removing and installing headlights now. Solid ballasts with CanBus interface, so no alerts when turning the headlights on. There are also great installation instructions on the Web, http://www.theautolamps.com/INFO/videos.html and http://www.theautolamps.com/INFO/guide.html, so I won't repeat what is in them.

Removing the bumper and the headlights went like a breeze, and so did the installation of the headlights. One minor issue is that there is not a good place to mount the HID ballasts. I ended up strapping them between the bracket over the headlights and the fender bracket

When I tested the headlights after installing them I was shocked by having no lights at all working. After fiddling with the plug I was able to get a few lamps in the left headlight working, so it clearly was bad connections between the headlight and the plug. On inspection I saw that the pins in the headlights are thinner than the ones int the originals, so problem identified. I decided to try to squeeze the receptacles in the plug tighter together. In retrospect I should have applied a slight twist to the pins in the headlights. I was a bit worried about the pins not mating with the receptacles, but didn't have a problem there. After much fiddling I was able to get all lamps to work reliably. I guess that's the penalty for buying Chinese.

Assembling the bumper went smoothly. Again, the main problem was to install the brackets that hold the bumper and fender together. The trick is to get the pin in the bracket all the way to the back of the slot it slides into while holding the fender and bumper in perfect position. There are some bumps in the plastic that must mate with holes for a perfect fit.

After assembling everything I adjusted the beams. Here I ran into the next issue. The low and high beams are adjusted together. After adjusting the low beams one high beam was too high and one was too low. I was able to get them close by removing the covers and twisting the projectors by hand. This bends the adjustment arm. I didn't dare twist them hard enough to get them perfect and will contact Fishcake to see what he says. Another penalty for buying low cost, and Fishcake states clearly that if you break something while self installing you are on your own. But I was so disappointed with the quality of the "professional" installation by Amazon Home Services that I knew I could do a better job myself.

In spite of the problems the quality of these head lights are much better than the ones I returned to Amazon. I'd say they are keepers.

A few pictures will be posted tomorrow.