Euro light conversion in 300E

[865sp300e]

I was fortunate to find on eBay a complete set of Hella Headlight with bulbs, Hella corner lights, wiper motors with arms and new Bosch blades, metal panels below the headlights in a dark green metallic paint. The parts were sourced from a German 500E where a driving light (pencil beam) replaces the fog light. The euro corners lack reflectors and a deeper yellow/orange color. The photo has US on the left, euro on right to compare. Many prefer clear corners but I like the look of the yellow corners on my red car.

Installation of the headlight/corner light/wiper motor was quite simple. The only change was to switch the headlight four pin connector to a six pin connector. No change required to the wiper or corner light connectors. The toughest part was repainting the lower panels.

Next I opted to install the euro headlight switch with headlight adjustment. The headlight switch was a direct swap. The headlight vacuum switch had three connections, a direct vacuum line to each headlight and the third was for a vacuum source. The yellow vacuum backflow connector had three connections, one for the economy gauge, one for the climate control, and the third was plugged. Every diagram I have seen showed only two connections. I used the available third connection as a source which I suppose would be for the transmission modulator for automatic transmissions (my 300E has a manual transmission). The tough part was routing the vacuum lines through the firewall to the dash switch. The instrument panel was pulled for access.

Overall the process was straightforward, I took time to route the vacuum lines so they could not be seen. To me the best part was no permanent modifications were made to the car, the original US spec lights and parts can be reinstalled easily. The only thing I have not done was to tap the parking light wire for the "city light" in the euro headlights.