Citroen DS front end wiring – part 4

I had gone as far as I could on my own with the DS. It was time to bring in the experts. I had spent a number of hours trying to get the lights to work. I made some progress, but was unable to get them to work correctly. Luckily Jason, my friendly DS mechanic was able to sort out the mess pretty quickly. Turns out there were multiple problems all contributing to the strange results I was seeing. People criticise British car wiring, but French DS wiring is no better.

Firstly there were some bad connectors that needed replacing. […]

Citroen DS front end wiring – part 3

Before I can get the DS back on the road, I need to sort out the front end wiring. This controls the headlights, indicators, horns etc. There is obviously something wrong here as I had been seeing strange behaviour in the lights. I spent some time on this late last year, and made only minimal progress. I had some suggestions to check the grounds. At the time I cleaned them and while they did look dirty it did not seem to make much difference.

To test properly, I bought a proper test light. This did allow me to more easily […]

W111 Headlight Restoration

My 250SE was sporting the stacked style of headlights, which are quite popular on these models. Personally, I prefer the original type. I had some original lights, but needed to restore them before they could be fitted to the car.

The wear parts of the headlights are the reflectors that dull and rust over time, the gaskets that crumble (as can be seen above) and obviously the bulbs. The housings are generally ok, although they can be bent if the screws are tightened too much. The fasteners that hold on the lens can also break.

The reflectors and […]

W108/W109/W111/W112 Mercedes headlight types

The headlights on the W108, W109, W111 and W112 Mercedes are all interchangeable, which means many cars are no longer sporting the headlights they left the factory with. They are all based on a design introduced on the 300SL roadster in 1957. The W113, W114/5 and W100 all had similar designs based on this same theme, but those lights will not be covered in this article and they are not interchangeable. The W110 had simpler, round headlights so is also not the focus here.

‘Lichteinheiten’

The standard headlights for these cars were know as ‘Lichteinheiten’. This roughly translates as ‘Light […]

W111 Headlight Upgrade Pt 1

After restoring the 250SE to the correct wheel trims, the next step is to fit the correct headlights. The car is currently fitted with the stacked headlights. These are often known as Americana headlights. They are actually different to the USA style as they use halogens not sealed beams. This style was a common extra on the V8 W111’s and later a popular after-market fitment on other W111, W112, W108 and W109’s. While these are more popular than the original, I prefer the original style. The question of which is the best W111 headlight is not easily resolved!

I had […]

560SEC European headlight upgrade

This post is a flashback to 2009 when I upgraded the lights on my 1988 560SEC I owned while living in Michigan.

When I moved to Michigan in 2007, I bought a 560SEC. The car was a bit rough, but Detroit is not a city you can really live in without a car, and it wasn’t expensive. Being a midwest car, it was already a little rusty, but had been upgraded to the European headlights. A 560SEC European headlight upgrade is not difficult, but the headlights are expensive. It was great to get a car with these lights.

After two […]