Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Doctor Gollum]

I acquired The Proper Car, a SWB W221 S500 back in July 2006 and bought it based on condition and mileage for the price rather than spec. Although I did get lucky with the colour... Flint Grey metallic with a grey over black interior... anything that might get grubby is black and helps break up what would otherwise be a sea of grey.

On the subject of spec, the car is reasonably well optioned from new:
Cornering Bi xenon's.
Upgraded leather.
Heated/ventilated Dynamic front seats.
Harmon Kardon sound system.
Telephone/Bluetooth installation.
Black headliner/A/B/C pillars.

All in all a very nice place to be but missing a few options I would have liked to have... We'll come back to that...

Some background:

I don't think I have owned a single car that I haven't done something to, generally sticking to factory (ish) upgrades, whether it's adding a Ghia X interior to my first car, a  1985 2.3 Granada LX, or replacing the plod interior on my '54 plate Omega estate for a full Elite interior with customised door cards and Irmscher kit/wheels and then subsequently reverting it back to full police spec, lights and siren included

The key to a successful upgrade project is the availability of information, parts and wiring. Nowadays, information is reasonably freely available. For parts and wiring there's a sweet spot of availability around 10-20 years old, (depending on the car), where there are enough around for a choice of used parts and availability of anything else from the manufacturer. So the Granadas were an easy car to work with in the late 90s, and likewise the Omegas until about 5 years ago with a decent inventory of cars being scrapped and dedicated breakers.

My first S Class, aka The Barge, (a '99 W220 S280) whilst not my first Mercedes, was a forced introduction to Canbus systems and fixing some previous bodgery opened up some creative retrofit possibilities. The ABS didn't work because the car thought it had Distronic, (Radar Cruise) fitted... it didn't, and this had to be programmed out of the car. If something can be programmed out, then why can't it be programmed in? That base S280 ended up with cornering Bi xenons, parking sensors front and rear, a different steering wheel and W221 wheels, but the bodywork left alot to be desired so there wasn't much point taking it further.

It's replacement, a '10 R350L, aka The Alabama Mumsybus, didn't escape the upgrade itch. It left the factory with prewiring for rear entertainment. It left me with rear entertainment fitted along with some US only rear stowage bits.

Mercedes retrofits are well documented in their maintenance system WIS, and with a bit of time and effort trawling through the EPC it's pretty straightforward identifying all the parts required for any given retrofit, even if it's not actually an official retrofit item. It doesn't hurt that they have pretty decent long term parts support so getting anything from a nut to a wiring harness for a near 20 year old car is still feasible, and their service item availablity is excellent.

[Doctor Gollum]

So, back to The Proper Car.

For each item added, I will go through the work involved in each case, but the beauty of Canbus, running wiring essentially means connecting to the correct can hub, power, ground and components. On the W221, there a Canbus hubs under both front seats and the fuses are either end of the dash or part of the front and rear SAMs. The cable runs are fully ducted so running wiring almost always involves removing one or both front seats and lifting the appropriate carpet. The grounds are generally local to the component or it's ECU.

Knowing the layout of the car and being able to read wiring diagrams is essential so that you can run the various harnesses without issue. Mercedes have colour bands on their harnesses so the placement/routing of additional harnesses is pretty foolproof. Everything else is nuts, bolts clips and time. Oh and some programming.

Almost all the wiring is brand new from Mercedes and is reasonably priced, the various components are second hand but correct to the age of the vehicle/chassis range and the hardware again new from Mercedes. Budget is obviously important, but equally the installation has to be up to standard.

My retrofit wishlist started out with the following:

Reversing Camera.
Night Vision.
Towbar.
Distronic.
Different wheels.

This escalated quickly

Next up:

Heated steering wheel.
Glovebox Aux input.
Remote bootlid power opening/closing (not just popping it).

Then the subject of rear side window blinds came up... Not a fan of extra tinted windows and the car already has heat reflective glass all round so blinds are a reasonable privacy addition without trashing the glass. This also escalated 

Rear door blinds.
Heated/vented dynamic individual rear seats with memory.
Ski hatch/through loading and rear fridge.
Roof bars.

Alot of these involve extra parts beyond the desired option. It goes without saying that there won't be a return on the retrofits, but it will be an exceptional spec when it's done. The only items not on the list of available options are rear seat entertainment, TV tuner and DAB... Arguably internet and tablets provide much better options than 20 year old tech and the glovebox aux input adds everything I need from the factory system

[johnnydog]

Whilst no one can criticise your desire to improve the equipment level in each of the vehicles you have owned, surely it would have been easier and cheaper to buy a higher spec vehicle or at least one with the equipment you wanted in the first place?
Which brings me back to the subject of buying an Omega CD and then retro fitting Elite trim, when it would make sense to buy an Elite initially?
You must have a lot of spare time on your hands too...

[STEMO]

2006??? 

That's some list. I'm surprised you could get all of the 'stuff' that was required without totally busting the bank.

@ johnnydog: I'm guessing Al knows what you are saying, and that would be the practical way to go. I'm also guessing that Al knows he'll never get the money back he's spending on it. But if it's your hobby (passion), then I'm sure we've all spent time/money on things we love to do. I'll bet we've all wished we hadn't at times too. But if it's a challenge you want.....then why not?

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

My 500CLS  was of 2005 or 2006 vintage.

Does it share the same engine as your car?

Only 306BHP from memory, but it was quicker than you might imagine because the 5.0V8 had plenty of torque.

[STEMO]

My 500CLS  was of 2005 or 2006 vintage.

Does it share the same engine as your car?

Only 306BHP from memory, but it was quicker than you might imagine because the 5.0V8 had plenty of torque.

I doubt Al acquired it in 2006, though, it might have been a tiny bit expensive back then.

[Doctor Gollum]

In no particular order...

It's a 2006 '56 car that I purchased in July 2023. I only spotted that glitch after it was too late to edit it I must have started typing then gone back and added to it before skipping ahead again. As optioned, it was circa £78k new. Fast forward 17 years and 112k and it had deprecated to £6k. It was originally ordered by a small garage in Kent on behalf of a local businessman so was specced to his requirements and collected from the factory rather than the local dealer.

This has the M273 engine, a 32v 5.5 litre with a very torquey 388bhp. Optis' CLS had the earlier M113. A pretty decent engine in it's own right but a 5.0 24v lump... The only thing wrong with it is that it has twice as many spark plugs as it needs which makes servicing more expensive but serves no other purpose.

In short, I bought it on condition and price not spec although I lucked out with the trim and body colour. There were similar mileage and age cars on offer with some of the wishlist options but these were significantly more expensive and were either ABC equipped, black on black, silver, diesel and long wheel base...

ABC is fantastic but horrendously expensive to fix... Basically when it starts to fail you HAVE to rebuild the entire system.
The all black interior looks almost as bland as all grey... With no contrast it's pretty boring.

Similarly there are very few S Class sold in the UK that aren't black or silver. Whilst both have a place, they aren't exactly individual.

It had to be ULEZ compliant. So diesel would have needed to be EU6 with adblue and dpf. 95% of all W221s ordered in the UK are diesel LWB in black or silver. So whilst that would have opened up significantly more choice, it wasn't what I wanted. The smaller 350 petrol M272 has much more of an issue with crank sprocket/balance shaft failure requiring the engine to be removed/rebuilt to fix... On the other hand the M273, whilst not immune to the same failure doesn't require the engine to be removed to fix it... instead it's a timing chain and sprocket replacement which (because it's not an Audi) can be done in situ. In short, it was the S500 or nowt, and SWB because it gets the job done without requiring two spaces to park it. So condition was much more important than spec and spending more money didn't actually guarantee either... Basically this car was in the right place at the right time and I jumped on it.

Doing it this way I get the exact spec I want without compromise. I would wager that no one in the UK ordered memory rear seats and a tow bar on the same car, let alone as a petrol V8. Will I get my money back? No, but it will make the car stand out in the market should I sell it. Is it expensive compared to buying a similarly equipped one? Probably, but as you can't buy one in that spec on the second hand market, is that cost actually relevant ie can you put a price on it?

As I go through each stage, I will give the factory option cost and an approximate breakdown of the parts cost as fitted. The only additional 'cost' is time identifying, sourcing and fitting each retrofit item. It will be relatively expensive compared to an Omega, but I think at the end of the day I will be significantly ahead of the factory cost.

[STEMO]

Where did you get the rear seats from. How were they delivered and how much did they cost?
I can't imagine there's a lot of them knocking around.

[Doctor Gollum]

Where did you get the rear seats from. How were they delivered and how much did they cost?
I can't imagine there's a lot of them knocking around.

I am still collecting the parts for the rear seat install... Another couple of months probably, however, what I will say, is that I stumbled across the seats in the correct spec and colour leather with the multi contour heated vented option for a sensible price. Plus the fuel to collect them... This chance discovery was one of the reasons that the rear seats were added to the list as matching the trim is one of the hardest things to do.

Actually the individual rear seats are pretty common as most LWB cars were optioned with them... The upgraded leather along with heated/vented is rarer, but this is also true of the fronts...

Also, for clarity, mine left the factory as a 5 seat car, and will remain so... I could switch it to a four seat car, but four seat S Class are pretty rare, so trim parts are hard to find and alot of unnecessary stuff is different such as the parcel shelf. Both options share the same outer seats, so the only variation is the centre seat base/storage box and their respective fittings. Both variations were factory available options on the SWB when mine was built so all the hardware mounting points are present.

[STEMO]

Sensible price is not good enough for me.....or Opti 

[Doctor Gollum]

Sensible price is not good enough for me.....or Opti 

Just the seats, £119 each. But you'll have to wait for the installation installment

[STEMO]

Sensible price is not good enough for me.....or Opti 

Just the seats, £119 each. But you'll have to wait for the installation installment

That's cheaper than I thought

[Doctor Gollum]

I'll do these in order of fitting and a separate post for each item.

[Doctor Gollum]

1. Bluetooth unit. Plugs into the cradle mount in the arm rest. Took.about 30 seconds to fit.

Dealer option. Was around £250, no longer available, NOS/refurbished are £240-275.

Bought used for £63.

Saving: £177.

[Doctor Gollum]

2. Reversing Camera. Mounts to the boot lid above the rear number plate.

Took an easy day to fit. Passenger seat, rear seat base, rear seat side trim and centre console out. Passenger side and rear carpet out. Boot floor, side and rear panel out along with boot lid interior trim. Bracket simply bolts/nuts to the inner rear quarter and the wiring simply clips into place with all the clips assembled into the loom from the factory, remembering to align the coloured bands. Retrofit guide and wiring diagrams confirmed the correct pin spaces in the head unit.

Items required:
Loom from head unit to the camera ECU via the Body Canbus hub. This also takes its power from the rear SAM. New £89.
Loom from ECU to camera. New £40.
Camera with part loom. Used £131.
Boot lid trim. Used £27.
Camera ECU. Used £38.
ECU bracket. Used £36.
Mounting hardware £3.

Factory option cost: £660.

Total cost: £364.

Saving: £296.