I agree, I actually by-passed it because I was going to keep my stock head unit since the cell phone is integrated with it. I had to get an Equalizer to balance the effects of haveing a radio with no fader (one of the reasons.) If I could do it again, I would say screw the stock head unit and CD-changer, and go aftermarket. On our 2nd 190E (before we sold it) I had a Kenwood Cass Head Unit, with the CD changer placed on the side of the trunk. A nice touch that I really liked (the instalers idea) was to take the bottom 2 rows of cassette holders out (mine is 3x2) and to add a 1/2-din equalizer by Kenwood.

Another nice touch (purely cosmetic) was to replace the switch for the fader with a switch that controlled my strobe lights. I added a strobe kit (very inexpensive) to the front side and rear lights. I had blue in the turn signlas (clear) up front, white up front in the headlights, red in the rear with white in the rear backups and yellow on the rear turn signals. Now since the rear lights have a very small compartment, I had to use strobe lights the were very small (hence not as bright) but they work very nicely. The switch was bought from MB and it is one of the fog light switches made for the console models. The switch was about $9 and it looks just like the power window switches.

------------------
Chirag (Charlie) Patel

- 99 Mercedes-Benx ML 430 V8 w/custom TV, Video, UHF, speaker system
- 93 190E 2.6 (4-sale) w/ an amp, equalizer, and CD-changer, integrated w. stock stereo for integrated cellular phone speaker system
- had a 93 190E m103 3.2, 5-speed trans,
- had a 88 300E 2.6
- had a 84 300TD w/275k+ miles
- 2001 C-Class - Maybe (if 190E sells)