Nav Retrofit Complete -- some lessons learned

[jfr1]

Just finished the Nav retrofit in my 1999 ML430 following Benza's instructions. In general the instructions were great but I did learn a thing or two. Perhaps I can save the next guy a little time or frustration. Here are my additions/notes to the process:


1. When I first put in my MCS unit, and then tried to take it back out to check the antenna connection, it hung up on the plastic frame when I tried to pull it back out. (The old radio came out easily, by the way) As I pulled harder, the wood surrounding the MCS wanted to come out, and I had visdions of cracking the wood frame (big$$$). Anyway I discovered that the wood frame comes off pretty easily, you need to help it down by the bottom but it'll pop off OK. Then I could extract the MCS. I never really could see what it was hanging up on, but letting the wood come off made it easiy to extract the MCS anyway.

2. If you only install the MCS without the Euro parts just to see if the CD changer works, you'll find out that the CD changer works (if you got one of the two units Benza recommends that work with the old CD changer (non Fiber optic) but you'll also discover that the AM radio doesn't work. After I finished the complete installation including the Euro parts, the AM radio worked fine

3. Before you undertake the installation, and disconnect the battery, put on the parking brake, put something behind your rear wheels if you are on a slope, and place the shifter in 1 or 2. You need to do this so the console can be removed. If you don't do this, and have already disconnected the battery, you can't shift the car from Park to D when the battery is disconnected (at least I couldn't) I had top put the battery back on during the middle of the installation to move the shifter.

4. I had some sort of bracket over the transfer case so my ML didn't quite look like the pictures in Benza's guide. But I did find all the connectiors just fine.

5. As you remove the console, pay attention to the routing of the cables as they come up through the console. You'll want to re route them back the same way during re-assembly (Had to do this twice to get the routing right.)

6. The cables aren't really color coded in that the place to plug them back into are matching in color, but they are physically different so you can't make a mistake.

7. Watch out for the switch for the back seat windows, when I tried to take it out to remove the console I managed to break all the tabs holding the switch in. It isn't really clear what you need to push or pry to disengage the switch so as can happen, I broke two tabs. Not real happy with the design, so this was the one casualty of the installation.

8. When puting the MCS back in there are a lot of cables and you need to push them back and down to make room for the MCS.

9. I couldn't see where to mount the splitter on the passenger side but there was a perfect place to mount it on the drivers side, out of the way of the MCS. Maybe some differences among ML's?

9. For what it's worth I was able to order the Euro parts from Smythe European here in Silicon Valley, it took about 10 days to get them and they didn't give me a hard time. They were able to find them in their system and placed an order normally. I had also ordered the parts from Drew so I have a spare set. Email me a jimr@rfj.com if your are interested in the three Euro parts.