The dreaded lamp malfunction
 

Note to self: don't take the car through a car wash station with high powered pressure washers :mad:

I had to clean all the bird pooh off, so I took it to one of those stations where you can spray it yourself instead of an automated wash. As soon as I got back in the car and started it up to drive off last night, I got the lamp malfunction light. When I got home, I didn't notice any lamps that looked burned out anywhere. I ran through the checklist I found online today and it's something in the daytime running lights circuit. As soon as I flipped the headlight switch on the W210, the warning on the dash came back on. I guess I'll have to look more closely so I can figure out which light in that circuit is going out.

It's my first problem on my newly acquired 99 E Class, but at least it's a cheap one lol

You’re posting on the diesel board. But I’ve owned a 99 e320 and you have my sympathies. The only solution to the bulb out message is an ample supply of electrical tape. A 4” piece placed over the information center does the trick.

Check the license plate bulb and socket.

Well, it is a diesel car. The car already has a piece of tape over the SRS light on the dash for the passenger seat sensor being worn out lol

I have a W210 as well, N/A Diesel, random malfunctions occur all the time, I just ignore it now.
Ok it isn't random, I placed a tiny ball bearing in the egr vacuum tube to stop it from activating and it threw a code. But still ignoring it.

Did you check the brake lights? Just the corners. A bad third brake bulb won’t trip the illumination malfunction warning.

Your car has daytime running lights? I thought MBs of that vintage used full headlights as DRLs.

Sixto
98 E320s sedan and wagon
02 C320 wagon

W210 does monitor the CMHSL (3rd brake light).

The trick is to start the car with the headlight switch off.
Clear the alarm if it is present press R on the right side of the cluster.

Check the bulbs in the following order. The bulb monitor will only activate when the bulb that is supposed to be lit is not determined to be pulling current.

Wait a couple seconds for the alarm to come in, the processor in the cluster is a little slow.

Step on brake
Put car in reverse
Left turn
Right turn
Lights in park position
Lights in head position
Pull out 1 stop for front fogs
Pull out 2 stops for rear fog

At some point in this process the warning should have come in.

This should help you narrow down which lamp it is.

A common point of failure is the tail light assemblies, the sockets can lose contact with the conductive traces and cause an intermittent bulb out alarm.

Use a little silver polish on a q-tip to clean these up. No abrasives! Then gently bend the contacts up a little to restore tension.

As for the seat pad, this can often be traced to a broken wire where the harness is zip tied to the frame. I was able to fix mine by splicing in a piece of cable harvested from an old desktop PC power supply cord. If you remove the seat and flip it over you should be able to spot this wire and fix the break without disassembling the entire seat to get the pad out.

The third brake light matter is still debated on BW. My ‘98 sedan has an inoperative third brake light with no warning. Others experience the same. Maybe pre-facelift non-rear shade models only? I’m working up the nerve to remove the cover without breaking it. The corner brake lights failed due to poor contacts and caused warnings. YMMV.

Add high beams to the sequence.

Sixto
98 E320s sedan and wagon
02 C320 wagon

Oops, didn't mean daytime running lights, meant parking lights lol My license plate lights do work, and when I was backing out this morning (at like 4:30 am) I could tell my 3rd brake light in the rear window work as I could see it light up when I hit the brakes.

Jay bob, that's the sequence I was following, and the warning popped up on the first setting on the headlight switch. If there are bulbs on the sides of the rear tail lights, I may not have checked for those. I was just checking to see that the regular tail lights were on when I had my headlights on. If there's a bulb on the side where the tail light wraps around, I'll have to look into that tomorrow morning.

Aha! I think I found it. When i got out of the car at work this morning, when the lights stay illuminated after i shut the car off, it looks like the passenger tail light has only 1 bulb lit, while the drivers side appears to have 2. It was hard to tell since the lights appear to be pretty close, as well as 1 bulb lighting up the housing sufficiently, but it does look like 1 may be burned out on the passenger side.