guys, the other day i found a Euro w123 at the junkyard, and it had a rear headrest set installed on it. i went ahead and grabbed the brackets (interestingly enough, the carpet swatches that protect the seat springs from the headrest brackets were all different colours).

what i didn't realize until yesterday was, that the models that had headrests equipped from the factory, had an additional metal bracket on each side, which holds the corresponding headrest bracket. so this means i needed to retrofit two brackets to each side of my original rear seat back. not a problem, right? right.

so i go back to the yard, and use a pair of bolt cutters to cut myslef a pair of bracket holding brackets. i then take it to the muffler shop to see if they can torch off the spot welds. turns out they couldn't do it, but they cut the excess metal to the same outline as the bracket itself. with a bit of fiddling with a drill and an angle grinder, and then after a coat of black paint to prevent the torched parts of the bracket from rusting, plus a few nuts, bolts and washers, i was able to attach these additional brackets to the seat back frame. installation took about half an hour for the brackets.

then the hard part, which was the installation of the oval-shaped plastic trim rings, through which the headrest posts stick through the seats. it killed me to cut the MB-tex with a razor blade, but that's what i had to do. then i had to take out some of the plush filler so i could sandwich the trim rings to the seat from both sides. this took a good two hours of careful work.

i noticed i accidentally used two original 'smooth grey' trim rings off a w123 for one side, but then picked up two newer 'black textured' trim rings for the ohter side. the black textured ones are also differnet in that the inside of the trim ring where the posts go through, have some pressure clips to prevent the headrest from flopping about. mb thinks of everything, right?

well finally i got everything all lined up, cut and installed. the rear headrests, i found out, are the same for w123 and w126 in the rear. the only difference is that the w123 ones were either half mb-tex, half cloth, all cloth, or all mb-tex. the w126 ones could be either one of those, or leather. so i went out and found myself some blue leather rear headrests off a w126 in mint condition, and that's what i used for this installation.

after removing the rear seat back, i spent a good hour cleaning the foam under it, and then the area under the foam. i found $2 of change, some chewing gum wrappers, and a pirates of carribean eye patch from the movie. earlier i had found a yoda toy plastic wrapper, from mcdonalds, under the driver's seat. the things you find in previously owned mercedes always boggle the mind.

here are some pics. after all, you read this far, you deserve to click on some pics now:

http://img24.imageshack.us/i/dscn0001w.jpg/

http://img232.imageshack.us/i/dscn0003e.jpg/

http://img196.imageshack.us/i/dscn0005o.jpg/

http://img24.imageshack.us/i/dscn0014u.jpg/

http://img84.imageshack.us/i/dscn0015.jpg/

http://img75.imageshack.us/i/dscn0016.jpg/

http://img196.imageshack.us/i/dscn0017n.jpg/

http://img75.imageshack.us/i/dscn0018.jpg/

http://img196.imageshack.us/i/dscn0020s.jpg/

http://img522.imageshack.us/i/dscn0021v.jpg/

http://img527.imageshack.us/i/dscn0022.jpg/

http://img196.imageshack.us/i/dscn0023e.jpg/

http://img522.imageshack.us/i/dscn0024e.jpg/