It's really not that difficult to remove the hood star. If your 300E has the OEM star on it you only have to do a couple of easy steps. When you open the hood and look at the star from below you will see two tabs. Grab those two tabs, squeeze them together, pull down, and rotate 90 degrees. There are two recesses that the tabs will lock into, and then you just pull the whole assembly out. NOTE: You can only rotate the tabs 90 degrees in one direction (I don't recall if it's clockwise or counter-clockwise.) The direction is quite obvious, though, when you take a look at it.