Next on the agenda was to do something about the terrible lighting that this Mercedes has (hmm, maybe I should say terrible lighting that all Mercedes have).  Of course the logical course of action was to acquire a set of Euro headlights which I purchased through www.puma-access.com on a group purchase for $290.  I also picked up a set of gray side markers which in my opinion are a better match to the euro headlights than the white side markers.  I don't have complete step by step instructions for this install, but I do have some pictures that can assist you with your own euro headlight install.  This picture here shows the ugly, yellowing factory headlight that provides little light at night



Here is a rear view of the Euro headlight.  You can see the black vacuum device that allows manual up/down adjustment of the light from inside the car (on euro cars that is). Vacuum lines can be hooked up to this and run inside your Mercedes to an adjustment knob that is installed right by your headlight switch.  At some future time I might actually do this but for now I can live with manually adjusting the lights.




Here is the 190 with the stock headlight removed.  To remove the light, you must first remove the side marker.  The side marker is removed by unscrewing a small wheel screw located on the inside of the engine compartment.  The side marker will just slide out after removal of the wheel screw.  To remove the headlight, there are two screws on the top and one screw that is on the bottom.  The bottom screw is accessed by you removing the rubber trim piece at the bottom of the light and then using a long Philips screwdriver you can get to the screw which is accessed through the small opening where the rubber trim is.

This picture shows the new euro headlight plug and the correct spots to install your factory wires.  I used a Fluke meter to determine which wire controlled which function and then traced the wires inside the euro headlight to find out which ones when for the fogs, high beams etc.  Would of been easier if a wiring schematic was included, oh well.  If you notice the blue wire, that is for the City light.  I connected the blue wire to the side market illumination wire, that way when just the side markers are turned on the city lights turn on also.  For background, in Europe, the side markets are not blinkers, they use single filament bulbs just for running lights, their blinkers are the city lights.  You can go this route if you want or you can do what I did.  Instead of using the single filament connectors/bulbs included with the gray side markers, I used my existing dual filament connector/bulb.  I then just added super-white city lights and wired those to my side markers. 



Here is a picture of the plug assembled and the blue wire (for the City lights) connected and in place.  One thing I should mention, please use my information as a guide, but use a multi-meter to make sure that you have the correct wires in the correct places.  I have seen differences in the colors of the wires that Mercedes uses in the same model from one year to the next.

This is the new Euro headlight with the rubber trim piece installed.  Note:  you can really only install the rubber piece after the headlight is installed, since you have to get that bottom screw in first.

You need to remove these clips from your old headlights and use them on your new Euro's.  These clips go on the top

On the left is the old headlight (yech!) and on the right is the new.  The Euro headlights have much better optics and glass lenses.  The beam pattern is much better and the existing housing/plugs allow you to use higher wattage bulbs.  The Euro headlights use H4 bulbs for your low/high beams and H3 for the fogs (same as the stock headlights).  I am running 85/85 watt Piaa Super White H4 bulbs, Nokia 75 watt H3 fogs,  Piaa Super White side marker bulbs and Super White City light bulbs.  Be careful about using colored City light bulbs, in many city's, any colors other than white or yellow on the front of a car is illegal, so check your local laws.

HID UPGRADE

I have always put off installing HID's in any of my cars because of the cost, but I finally found a source in Germany, so I arranged to have a set of Hella ballasts and Philips D2R burners shipped over to me for testing.  These components are OEM for BMW and several other German auto's.  The HID's arrived without instructions or wire harnesses, no problem since I would be custom making a wire harness and adding relays to power the HID's. 

I did some initial measurements and the Hella ballasts would not fit under the headlights, so I mounted them on the rear of the headlights.  On other models it may be possible to mount your ballasts under the lights.

Here is the complete kit and the wire harness I put together, I made the harnesses before I had this kit, so they are way too long, but I will cut them down.  You can also see the Philips D2R burners and I have epoxied H4 metal mounting rings onto them.  You can pull your H4 metal mounting rings off of your old H4 bulbs.

A closer look at the Hella ballast.  Nothing too fancy here, but they are OEM, not a unit designed for retail sale.

 

Another close up shot of the Philips D2R burners with the H4 mounting rings in place.

These removal steps are going to be somewhat redundant, since I pretty much covered all of this when I initially installed the Euro spec light assemblies, but I will go over it once again.  To remove the light housings, you need to first remove these two top bolts, they are 8 mm



 

Nest you need to remove the bottom trim piece, it also is held on with a 8 mm bolt.

Now the rubber weather trim needs to be removed since there is one more 8 mm bolt to get at.

You can see the 8 mm bolt between the bumper and the headlight.  I would suggest you unscrew it till its almost all the way out, but not all the way, its a pain if you drop it!

The last item to remove is the side marker.  On my 201, there is a small white round nut that needs to be removed before the side marker will come off, you can see it in this picture.

Here we have the headlight and the side market removed.  Make sure that all the wire harnesses are out of the way, its easy to get one pinched if your not carefull.

This is the headlight with the rear cover removed.  I elected to remove the brown (ground) and the yellow wire (low beam) from the existing socket and use these as they were to connect to the HID's, the harness and other wires were tucked out of the way.

You can see inside the lens and you will notice that there is a light reflector but it has no shield mounted in it.  The Euro spec headlight assemblies for the 124's do have the shield, so I might play around with adding a shield to see how the light pattern changes.

This is just a test fitting of the HID burner and the socket.  This socket is quite big and it hits the rear cover of the headlight, but the cover will still go on.  A bit of trimming may need to be done.

I decided to bring the wires from the relay and ballast into the headlight assembly via the bottom of the rear cover, you can see that it is marked for notching.  This would help in keep out any water that may get into the engine compartment.

I notched the cover using a Dremel with a cutting bit.  You can see that I also cut a notch in the rubber seal, just enough to allow the ballast harness to enter.

To mount the Hella ballast to the rear cover, I used 3M two sided tape, the good stuff designed for body side molding, very strong.  Remember to clean the rear of the ballast and the rear cover with alcohol so the tape will have a clean surface to adhere to.

After the ballast was secure, I routed the wires through the notch in the cover.  I used a wire clamp to hold the wires in place.

This is a better picture of the ballast wires going through the notch and the rubber seal put back in place.

Here is the rear cover with the ballast installed and the relay next to it.  I found out later that I needed to move the ballast about .5" to the right (if your looking at this picture) I had clearance problems with the AC filter which is right behind the headlight.  With the ballast and relay on the back of the cover, space is very tight and removal of the cover is not going to be easy.  This only happens on the drivers side, on the passenger side, there is much more clearance, this step by step instruction covers the drivers side installation, I did not document the passenger side.

This picture shows everything connected and were ready to close the rear cover.

Another picture of the finished light assembly with the rear cover in place.

And another picture detailing the bottom the headlight assembly

This is a picture of the rear, you can see all the relay wire was covered in split loom tubing.

This picture shows the euro headlights with Piaa 80/80watt SuperWhite bulbs on both sides (before the HID upgrade)

Here you can see the Piaa on the left and the HID on the right, what a difference in color and brightness!




 

Finally, a picture of both HID's!  I had to spend a bit of time tweaking the alignment of these HID's, they project light so far down the street and way off to both sides of the vehicle.  I am very impressed so far.  As for color, these appear to be in the 4100K color range, very white to a light blue in color.  As I mentioned, the euro headlight assemblies have the light reflector directly in front of the bulb, but there is no cap on the reflector, so I may try to fabricate something to see what if any difference in light output or the projection pattern. 


EURO HEADLIGHT ADJUSTER

In Europe, Mercedes Benz models come with a nice feature that allows you to adjust the level of your headlights from inside the car.  For US consumption, we don't get the Euro headlights (with internal vacuum adjuster) or the inside adjustment switch.  Previously in this section you read about the install of Hella Euro headlights, these lights have the internal vacuum adjustment capability, but I still needed a switch, fortunately I bought some parts from a person in Germany and he sold me the Euro headlight adjustment switch and panel for $1 Euro dollar.  Now I am ready to make the headlights adjustable!



This is the US spec headlight control and panel.  To remove, you pull off the headlight switch and use a 24mm socket to remove the nut.  On the right side of the switch panel is a post that had some sort of speed nut on the end of it, not sure how you are "officially" supposed to remove it, but in the process of trying to figure that out, it broke.  Its possible that you would have to remove the instrument cluster to get access, so keep that in mind if you attempt this upgrade.

Here is a picture of the dash with the switch cover removed, you can see that there is already an opening for the headlight adjustment switch.  You can also see that I removed the knee bolster cover to gain access to under the dash.  Your going to need to do this (if you don't pull your instrument cluster) so you can feed the vacuum tube from the engine compartment to the switch opening.




Here you can see the large rubber grommet that I fed the vacuum line through.  You can use  needle nose pliers to pull off the rubber ends to make a hole to feed the tube through.  The tube I used is standard MB vacuum tube used throughout the engine bay, its about 1/8" in diameter and is about $1.50 per 3 meters from the dealer.  Also, to do this install, figure about 15 feet of tube, two rubber vacuum "T" couplers, two straight rubber couplers and two right angle rubber couplers.  Depending upon where you draw a vacuum source from, you may also need a check valve, this keeps pressure in the line when the vehicle is turned off, the black end of the valve goes towards the vacuum source.  All these couplers and check valve are available at your local auto parts store which is less expensive then picking them up at the dealer.

This is the Euro light switch cover and headlight adjustment switch as it arrived from Germany.  Although a used item, it is in excellent condition (genuine Bosch item)

This is the back of the euro headlight adjustment switch, you can see that I installed the two straight rubber couplers..

Another picture of the vacuum line pulled and connected to the headlight adjustment switch.






Once the lines are connected, you can install the headlight switch cover and adjustment switch.  This particular switch has illumination capability, but I had no easy access to any light source to hook up to it, so I will leave that as a project for a later time.

In this picture you can see the two vacuum lines and if you notice, there is a yellow blow back valve that had a rubber right angle coupler removed, this is where I chose to get my vacuum source from.  Some people have used the economy gauge on the back of the instrument cluster, but my model does not have that feature.

Here you can see how I used a rubber "T" coupler to tap into this existing vacuum source.  A important note to remember, The vacuum source goes into the top connector on the switch (# 1) and the line to the headlights on the bottom connector of the switch (# 2)





If you look closely in this picture you will see the right angle rubber coupler attached to the headlight and the clear vacuum tube coming up and routed with the factory wire harness.






Another picture of the drivers side vacuum tubing routed with the factory wire harness and routed through the bulk head via a blank spot in a rubber grommet.

This picture is of the passenger side and shows the rubber right angle coupler and the vacuum tube entering the factory wire harness.






On the passenger side, the vacuum tube was routed up to another rubber grommet in the bulk head.  After going through the rubber grommet, I removed the black plastic cover behind the battery.  The tube was routed behind the ECU and up into a small opening that leads to the center grill area (grill that covers the wiper internals) There are two screws to remove to allow semi access to this compartment, I used that access to get the tube and feed it to the other side.




In this last picture you can see how I used a rubber "T" to connect the two headlight tubes together, all this tubing was neatly tucked away beside the fuse block, its pulled out for purposes of this picture.  It took about 1.5" hours to do this install and it works very well.  Its a excellent upgrade for those who have Euro lights.



8/18/03 Euro Headlight Wipers!

I sourced these from Germany for around $60.  The package included the motors, wiper arms, wiper blades and a Y splitter for the washer fluid.  Since I am using Euro headlights, I had to use Euro wipers. 

Staying with my "mono" colored scheme, I painted the wiper arms body color.  Its important that you prep the items correctly for a nice, even finish.






190's with headlight wipers normally have a different wiper fluid tank and an extra pump for the wipers.  When I manage to locate one of those I will get one but for now, I used the Y splitter to tap off of the existing pump so I can feed tubing to the front headlight wipers.  

The wiper motor mounts to the OEM spot on the Euro lights and secures via a small screw.  This part is pretty simple






You can see here that the plug for the wiper motor has a nice spot it snaps into.

As with most Mercedes, if you did not purchase an option from the factory, Mercedes normally does not include any wiring and/or relays.  Thus is the case with the wipers, no wire harness.  I fabricated my own wire harness using plugs left over from my original headlights.  Not quite as clean as Mercedes but it works.




I chose to use my existing headlight trim so holes needed to be drilled for the wiper motor stalk and for the washer fluid plug.  I would suggest getting new, euro trim pieces with the holes already pre-drilled.  Its hard to get the holes just perfect.  I ended up using some rubber grommets and still had to dremel out the insides to get a good snag free fit.

The finished product!  Antithetically, I really like the look of the Euro wipers, especially painted body color.



 

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