Nearly there with 1984 MBZ 240D

No... number 2 wire is not for ground. It is for the European parking lamp ... that little bulb just above the headlight. See if yours lights up.

My guess is the mechanic installed the 6 prong plugs to make your headlights work. You didn't tell us that your headlight is already working after the mechanic installed them for you.

Reread the posts I wrote to solve that number 2 wire situation.

There is a small bulb about 5/16" diameter in the headlamp but it is below the main bulb. I did check to make sure that the BOSCH on the lamp glass was the right way up.

I traced the brown wire that came from the left front turn signal lamp and it went to a harness in the trunk. From that harness connection one wire went to the rear left turn signal lamp and the other into the stick on the steering wheel. Now then, would not cutting that brown wire near the front left turn signal not knock out that front left signal lamp? And, would not the rear left signal lamp continue signaling, am I all confused?

No mechanic has been involved yet. While I was installing the lights I noticed those 6-hole sockets, to my astonishment. Even the manual shows

4-hole sockets. Late yesterday I plugged these sockets on the lamps and the headlights seem to work fine but, not surprisingly, no turn signals appeared. Some more wires definitely need to be connected.

Of the two sockets I just received from England, one has 2 brown wires coming from no. 2 on the socket. The other socket number 2 has 3 brown wires coming out.

I'll have a go at that now.

Thanks again :-)

I have been telling you that by using multimeter, you can figure out which wire does what. You don't need any manual to tell you what color and what it is for.

Ground - Low Beam + High Beam + Fog Light + Parking light +

That is 5 wires. Extra ground wires you see bundles is to assist with the load. You have to have enough wire thickness to handle the 3 lights that you turn on.

You will never be able to turn on all 4 lights at the same time. You either get low or high beam... but not both.

So with three lights, that is 3 positive wires... theoretically you need 3 ground wires, but two is enough because the parking light is very little power/load.

Ok, so how do you make the measurements here - the headlamp socket wires to ground or? What position is the dip switch arm, or whatever it is called, in when the measurements are made? Is seems to me to be a complicated issue.

The lamp- or light- switch on the dash has 6 positions. Some lights don't light up. I suspect the missing ground connections in the sockets.

I hope so.

The ignition switch should see to that.

Good news!

First turn on your lights... do you get fog light? low beam? high beam? Are they working correctly?

.... and now, the not so good news. Each headlamp has 5 pins. The previous wires were attached to pins 1(maybe),2,3 and 4 in the socket. But that leaves 5 and 6 without an electrical connection and the same problem exists on the other side of the car.

I removed the sockets from both lamps and gave all the pins a little vaseline. I replaced the sockets and found that the headlights were fine. The dipped state seemed to be a bit on the dark side. The tiny bulb did not give much light. I'll have to wait for a dark night to test it.

There is no trace of turn signals at all and, it has been so long since I drove in fog, I cannot even remember where the switch is. I doubt I have driven in fog for more than a few weeks in the car's 27 years.

A little more work ahead.

Thanks for your help :-)

I looked at the "Layout of Coupler" on the 230E. Hole 1 is empty. The holes are labeled:

1 3 5 |-------- (wires) 2 4 6

The "Cable Layout of Coupling" on the 240D, according to the MBZ manuals, is supposed to look like this:

1 2 |-------- (wires) 2 4

but it is not like that in the 240D car.

What is there now is

1 3 5 |-------- (wires) 2 4 6

but 2 wires are missing - from 5 and 6.

Should these 2 wires be there for the turn signals?

Does your headlight unit work? Fog light, low beam, and high beam?

This I posted on 8/18:

I removed the sockets from both lamps and gave all the pins a little vaseline. I replaced the sockets and found that the headlights were fine. The dipped state seemed to be a bit on the dark side. The tiny bulb did not give much light. I'll have to wait for a dark night to test it.

Next task is to look for the Plug Connections (Item 76 in the wiring diagram) that are under the rear seat or somewhere in the trunk. Disconnecting the wiring that comes back from there to the turn signals up front should shut them off. Alternatively I may be able to remove the double-filament bulb up front and replace it with a single filament bulb that is for parking only. The sockets are 3-pin - they were for parking and turn signaling. Snipping one wire in each socket might give me 2 parking lamps.

I think you're in way over your head here. This ain't rocket science. As Tiger pointed out, you have a light assembly that you can either visually identify which wire goes to what bulb, or you can use a VOM, or you could just jumper it to a 12V source and find out what lights up.

On the car you have the old wires and using a VOM you can find which wire is high beam, which is low, etc by just turning them on one at a time. The whole thing should take 5mins. You could cut a light wiring harness, hide the color of all the wires, and I could hook it back up in 5 mins using the above method.

Hello Trader :-) and thanks for your interest.

I have almost all the info that I need now. It came from days of refreshment from the MBZ manuals, reading Tiger, and wiring diagrams and I believe all the wiring will be done by tomorrow. This car was so reliable that I rarely had much work to do on it. The past few weeks have been a revision. The two lamps, parking and turn signal, on the front of the car had to be modified to dump the turn signal. I checked the wiring from those two lamps back to the trunk of the car and found a place where I could stop the turn signals.

I also found another place, right up front at the lamps and all I had to do was to pull the grey wire out of the socket and tape up the metal, leaving only the brown and black/white wires for the parking lights. Taping the turn signal lamp was done instead of cutting the wire because I may again drive on the right-hand-side-of-the-road.

Have a great weekend :-)