Hello,

For the past few months the exterior lamp failure indicator comes on and off intermittently. I scrutinized every bulb. Couldn't find anything. I replaced all the bulbs with new oem bulbs (even the license plate bulbs). I thought that fixed it and the indicator came back on a few days later.

I sort of lived with it until today when I decided to pull the lamp failure module out of the relay box under the hood. Wouldn't you know...there were a few cracked solder joints. I resoldered everything and popped the module back in. PROBLEM GONE. It took so little time to do it I don't know why I didn't check it before.

Nolan

What car do you have?

Which one is the module, any picture?

As it seems very easy to do it may be worth checking mine as well as a preventive maintenance my car is 260E 1988

Yes, same question,

What car do you have? I have a friend with a 97 S500 that has the exact same problem. Where is this relay exactly?

I have a 1993 400E. The control module was located in the fuse box. You have to unscrew the back cover to reveal the relays. It's the biggest one in there. Part number 126 542 01 32. Number 101 in the Diagram.

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Hi,
I have the same problem, where is the relay located on a late model 126 car?

Seems like these cars have a lot of soldering issues!


Thanks
Dan

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Cam69ss,

Looks like on the 1990 300SE it is also located in the fuse box next to the brake booster. Same part number.

Nolan

thanks for the picture...gave me the motivation to go pull the unit. Infortunately when I did, i could hear something loose in the module...opened it on a clean workspace and out dropped a small bit of burned metal.
Seems there are a few large flat metal connectors in this thing that are supposed to carry a charge. One of mine is burt like a bad fuse (the S15 one). MBZ dealer wants $240 for this puppy. I am not comfortable with this unless I really know the new one won't be fried too.
Any thoughts?
do you know what S15 is?
any repairing something like this?
off to search the junk yard pages.
John

1991 190e 2.6 -- same exact problem.

1. Can anyone shed light on where I might locate MY "lamp failure module"?

2. WHICH bulbs is it designed to indicate are out? One of my dash bulbs and one of my license plate bulbs have been out for some time. However, the indicator didn't show until one of my brake lights went out last week. I replaced it -- but now the indicator flickers on and off.

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1994 C280, dark green metallic
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1991 190E 2.6, Black
191,500 miles
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2003 Chevy Tahoe LT, Redfire Metallic
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1989 Mustang GT Cobra Convertible
43k miles

Sorry to drag this old thread up, but I recently worked on mine and I can answer a few questions posed in this thread. Perhaps someone will find it useful.

After pulling mine out, I discovered a few things. First is several cracked solder joints. Repairing that was no big deal. But then I noticed a burned circuit trace, and sure enough one of the resistors is getting very hot. By the way, that's what those metal plates are. They're resistors. What they do in this circuit is pretty cool. They are used as shunts to allow a circuit to measure how much current is being drawn by the lamps, thus allowing a decision to be made by logic circuits as to weather or not a bulb is blown. Their resistance is going to be extremely low, as they are metal and thick. Their wattage is high as they are carrying a bunch of current.

So, their resistance is very critical. Unfortunately, one of mine is on the way to burning up. It's darkened and shows evidence of having been quite hot. It totally burned up the board trace on one end and I had to do surgery. Basically, I had to peel back the bad trace a bit, cut off the burned portion. Then I had to scrape off the insulation varnish and expose some clean copper to solder. I then jumped a piece of 14GA stranded copper wire from my new trace pad to the base of the resistor.

Now, I'm wishfully hoping that the problem was in fact that the resistor got so hot that it unsoldered itself from the board slightly, which then caused the resistance to go up and up until the trace burned and the resistor started to deform. I'm really hoping that making a good solid connection to this resistor will alleviate its overheating. The 14GA copper will serve as a heat sink at the resistor base, so it shouldn't desolder itself again unless it gets really hot. Hopefully it will run cooler now..... Hopefully.


If the material was known, one could make a new one by stenciling the old one's pattern and cutting very carefully. You would have to match the material and the thickness exactly.

I wonder if the turn signals work at all without this module..... Hmmmm......


Merry Christmas


-tp

I don't believe any of the exterior lamps will work without this module in place.

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Wow, that is my problem, indicator light out on in dash, driver side one parking get juice but light doesn't come on, anyone can let me know where the indicator location and part #for the E430 2001 so I can get one in junk yard. i'll deeply appreciate it.