One of the items
I have never liked on the W201/W124 was the lack of an auto dimming rear
view mirror. I had seen aftermarket models but they mounted to the
windshield, it wasn't till I test drove a S500 that I saw this very slick,
beige auto dimming mirror with integrated homelink controls. Pat at
Potomic German Auto was kind enough to provide me with this mirror for
testing purposes, its not a direct snap in to our W201 by any means.
This particular mirror is most likely from a CLK but it could be from a
S500, it does not have the outputs for the auto dimming side mirrors
though, that leads me to believe its from a CLK.
This is the mirror viewed from the bottom, you can see the homelink controls. The hole in the mounting plate is for a small microphone used for the hands free Mercedes cell phone.
You can see
the CLK mirror next to the stock W201 mirror, there really is no way to
get the CLK mirror to mount to our car without a bit of work.
This is the
recessed mounting hole for the W201 mirror. The CLK mirror looks
like it would mount but it is too big to recess into this hole and lock
into place.
To mount the
CLK mirror, you need to take it apart and remove the swivel ball mount.
The front plastic trim needs to be carefully removed using a small flat
blade screw driver. Its not easy, looks like it was never designed
to come apart, the little lock tabs are easily broken.
On the left
you can see the small control box for the homelink transmitter and the
auto dimming mirror. The swivel ball mount has four screws that need
to be removed and then a lock ring that holds the swivel ball into the
mount.
This picture
shows the two wire connection plug for the mirror, a simple power, ground
and reverse lock out. The S500 mirrors have five wires, two
additional for the left/right auto dimming of the side mirrors.
This is the
internal connector that plugs into the mirror. Two wires come off of
it and go over to the homelink transmitter (power/ground)
This is the
stock W201/W124 mount. You can see that in its original state, it
can not be used with the CLK mirror. The CLK mirror mounts from the
top and the W201/W124 mirror mounts from the back of the mirror, hence why
this mounting bracket has a curved end. It is also covered with a
textured black rubber which you see pulled back and away from the end of
this mount.
Here is the stock mount with the end cut off and grinded down. This is for preparation of the ball swivel transplant
This is a top
view of the stock W201/W124 mount. You can barely notice that I
drilled a hole into the end of it, this is to facilitate the running of
the power wires from the CLK mirror up into the headliner. 
This is the
stock W201/W124 mirror mount with the swivel ball from the CLK mirror
mount. I had to cut the swivel ball off and fit it to the W201/W124
mount. The ball on the W201/W124 mount was too small to work on the
CLK mirror. This is as far as I have gone on this project, next up
is the welding of the ball, once that is done, then I should be able to
roll the rubber cover back down over the weld and it should look as though
it came directly from MB.