No dealer on Maui (small island), but the dealer on the next island had me take the car to a local mech who changed out the complete tail light assembly to include bulbs in about 30 minutes - zero charge. Now I have new tail lights on my 99 SLK.
Did mine today. What is that they exactly changed out? They didn't touch the light housings did they? I can't tell any difference looking at it, lol.
Jerry
I am new to this forum, but have had my slk230 for 6 months and still love it. I do however get disappointed every now and then when I see that someone has taken a shortcut, or as I suspect in this case deliberately ignored an obvious mistake. As both a mechanical engineering tradesman and degree qualified professional engineer who has worked in the automotive industry, I know a stuff up when I see it.
I agree that heat generated by the globe over time will cause the globe holder and metal contact to experience what is known in the engineering field as "thermal creep", where metals and plastic "relax" and exhibit plastic (ductile) behaviour; which in this case causes a decrease in the contact force between the globe holder contact point and the tail-light chassis. This is basis of the simplified and ever so graceful excuse the MB public relations machine has sold to its customers in its US recall. And yes, a higher wattage globe places additional demand on the contact point of concern causing pitting, but this is not the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is that the tail-light moulding is incorrect, and from my experience the tail-light moulding appears to be an abandoned prototype version that made it into full production by mistake, without a matching brake light bulb holder.
By chance, the final production released bulb holder design was however actually robust enough to work with incorrectly formed (deformed) tail-light housing. I seriously doubt the poor fitment of the globe holder could have gone un-noticed for too long by MB, if un-noticed at all, but it appears a call was made to continue anyway.
The bottom line is that the additional metal strip shown in the web page for the fix is actually showing a relatively effective way to bridge the excessive gap produced by MB's deformed tail-light moulding and standard bulb holder. It should even be be done before a complete light failure, as the pitting is caused by repeated intermittent failure of the globe during normal use when arcing occurs.
The botom line is these tail-lights are failing (flashing) long before they fail completely.
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“Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little." - Plutarch. "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
OZTDS are you trying to say the heat from the bulb melts the plastic??
The author of the post I quoted (ie. not me) says that:
1. The plastic mould was bad and the tolerances poor
2. Thermal creep exascerbates the problem and generates arcing at the bulb contact
3. Over time the contact gets badly pitted and carbonised and the bulb fails to illuminate. Hence the problem we all know and love.
The tail light recall is only available in the USA and fits a prperly formed tail light assembly.
The rest of us have to
a) pay for new tail lights; or
b) clean up the contacts and make them thicker so the bulb stays in contact; or
c) buy LED tail lights which are brighter and so far not failure prone.
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