It sounds to me like you have had a bad experience! I am sorry to hear about all the problems they experienced working on your car. It sounds to me as if they had no experience working on mercedes. I believe the problems are all repairable but I don't think I would revisit the same facility to experiment any more with your car. I would recommend calling the nearest mercedes dealer and ask who they use for aftermarket audio work and talk to them about your situation. The first problem of the dash lights being inop there are a couple of possibilities. #1 the dimmer control is fried #2 the fuse is blown either in the fuse box or in the back of the cluster. #3 the illumination wire behind the radio is shorted to ground poss causing the fuse to blow etc...

The antenna problem is probably the antenna trigger wire is disconnected behind the radio. It is hard to find sometimes because it falls down into the dash and it is a single blue wire sheathed in black vinyl tubing. Did they run an antenna coaxial cable from the rear tuner to the radio?


The speaker blowing might just be that the speaker terminals are grounded to the sheet metal in the rear deck causing a direct short. This can be checked easily from underneath in the trunk.

I deal with this kind of thing weekly as we have plenty of shops in San Diego that sacrifice quality installation for high volume sales. Let this be a lesson to you that is very hard to find anything for cheap or nothing that is any good especially when it comes to car audio. Don't let them fool you telling you that you can't return them because they were on sale. With all of the problems you have had I would call and talk to the owner or manager and let them know how many problems you have had.

Scott@lajollaaudio

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The Mercedes Specialists Since 1986