82 240D Broken Headlights and Assembly
 

Need some guidance on removing the existing Bosch headlight assembly. The existing Headlights are dim compared to another W123 that I have, so I suspect some high resistance joint in the electric circuit, plus one of the fog lights got hit with a rock and shattered the glass. The Bosch door assemblies which the lights are mounted in are crazed/cracked and old. They have seen better days. Since I'm trying to restore this car, and have to take the lights out anyway, I was going the replace the door assemblies at the same time. So if anybody can help, it would be appreciated.
Thanks

I'd upgrade to the euro headlamps.

or if you don't want to go with non sealed driving lights that take the H4 bulb. If you don't want to spring $45 a side for new headlight doors you could remove the plastic and paint the fins black. I did that to my old 300D

New doors are available. As are quality H4 units.

This: http://www.rallylights.com/detail.aspx?ID=739 is what I have in the CD.

Those are cool and I'll plan on using theses lights. What do you have to do to get the old door assemblies out of the car.

Look on the back of the assembly, if you have a North America car, there will be four (I think) round white knurled knobs. Remove those and the door will come out from the front. Then, loosen the two phillips screws on the bezel, the headlight itself will come out. The plug is the same.

Euro headlights have a different plug.

Well we would wouldn't we! Why do we need so many different plugs?

It is the same for household electricity too. Even here in Europe where we're all running 220 / 230 Volts single phase French plugs look like Dutch ones but are not (really) compatible, English ones are super safe with in built fuses (from what I've seen of French and Dutch home electrics they could all use those!) and the Germans are again slightly different from the French and the Dutch... I can't remember what other countries are like but I guess they too have their own little patriotic wall mounted idiosyncrasies

Australia, too. Not to mention different country's DVD's have a different protocol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

Hey, the world is different. Look at GB and it's colonies, they drive on the "wrong" side of the road!

Here's to diversity, well, maybe not.

But one of the beauties of the older Benzes is that the plugs are able to be disassembled and re-used. If you're swapping from DOT to euro lights, you could disassemble the 4 (I think) pin plug and reinstall the standard pins into a 6 pin plug (you may need to jumper a wire - or delve into the other DOT 4 pin plug). Since the plug housings are more/less standard you might be able to re-purpose an old power antenna plug into a new euro light plug.

I agree with the plug issue. Anyway, thanks for the help. There where actually 3 white nylon knobs holding the light doors in place. They all came out easily except one and my blistered up finger is still feeling it!
To make a long story short, I bought a 240D because of the reliability which another family member had with her's. Then, a year later and without expecting it, I now own that one to. So now I have an 82 and an 83 240D. Both are in need of a paint job but need to deal with the mechanical/electrical issues first.
The Door frames will both be replaced, along with the two headlights and the cracked fog lights. Also, a new emblem star needs to be put on the grill top for the old one is broken So, the goal is to do a face lift on the front end.