Fitting Facelift Sideskirts Onto A Pre-facelift W208 Clk

[SilverSaloon]

Fitting sideskirts is quite an easy mod…. Firstly you need the parts. I purchased mine second hand. This applies to a 1999 pre-facelift W208 CLK, but it is more-than likely most pre-facelift Mercedes will be similar.

Part number for the passenger side skirt is A208 698 11 54. Not sure on the drivers side (sorry forgot to take a note!). You also need to make sure you purchase the rubber trim and all the clips too. The skirts come primed when new so you will also need to either paint them yourself (which I did) or get a bodyshop to paint them. Painting yourself is not that difficult as long as you take your time. My passenger skirt was damaged and previously repaired before I bought it. I had to repair it again and got a good finish.

Right onto fitting…..

The pre-facelift car will look like this to begin with. Note the black painted sill:

 

[SilverSaloon]

The next step is to remove all the pre-facelift trim that the new skirt trim replaces. This is the black plastic lines just above the sill either side of the door as pictured:

 

[SilverSaloon]

This will probably leave white plastic clips inside the holes in the bodywork. These have to be removed for the new skirt clips to fit. All the holes should now be empty without any plastic clips in them:

 

[SilverSaloon]

Next you need to remove both front and rear jack points. Using a flat bedded screwdriver, pull out the centre of the plastic trim before pulling the whole unit out revealing the hole behind. The same procedure applies to the jack point underneath the car in the same place:

 

[SilverSaloon]

once removed:

 

[SilverSaloon]

There is also a plastic guard on the rear of the car that is the end bit of the rear wheel arch guard. This needs to be unscrewed with a spanner so the skirt can clip on between this and the bodywork. The bolt for this sits just before the rear wheel above where the skirt will go. Just undo the bolt here and when you fit the skirt later on, it will just slide in underneath. When loosened, you will have this:

 

[SilverSaloon]

Finally remove the black plastic strip just infront of the Mercedes door kick plate. This unclips like the rest of the trim revealing this:

 

[SilverSaloon]

All the pre-facelift trim should now have been removed ready for the sideskirt to be put in place. However before you fit the skirt, it is probably a good time to wash the area down to get rid of all the years of dirt that would have built up.

Another good thing to do before fitting the new skirt is to place the plastic rivet holders into the 5 holes underneath the car. You should have got these holders with the skirts. I had to purchase new ones of these as mine were missing when I bought the 2nd hand skirts.

Now you are ready to fit the skirt onto the car!! This is before the skirt was fitted inside by garage (where I also sprayed it):

 

[SilverSaloon]

Before fitting the skirt clip all the clips into place on the skirt. This includes the top clips (these were green on mine). Then carefully place the skirt onto the car. The best way I found was to try and clip on the top (green) clips first and then push the clips on either side of the door on. Remember to place the lower part of the skirt underneath the plastic guard we loosened earler. Once secured in place, tighten up the guard and put back the two jack point items underneath the car. The pre-facelift front ones fitted back on OK, but I had to re-order rear ones as they didn’t seem to fit with the extra spacing of the skirt.

Then using the plastic rivets, screw the rivets in place underneath the car.

The skirt should now be fully fitted and your car should look like as below and ready to fit the other side!!!

 

[SilverSaloon]

another finished pic:

 

[SilverSaloon]

I also intend on replacing and fitting the black lower trim on my bumpers to the facelift colour-coded trim. This is all sprayed and ready to be fitted. Watch this space!

If you fancy attempting this mod, please feel free to PM me with any questions/queries and I will do my best to answer them. Hope this helps somebody!

 

[KillerHERTZ]

Excellent HOW TO mate, I plan to fit some to my w202 in a month or so, and this will help greatly.

I can imagin the w202 is virtually the same

 

[SilverSaloon]

Excellent HOW TO mate, I plan to fit some to my w202 in a month or so, and this will help greatly.

I can imagin the w202 is virtually the same

sorry for the lack of pictures but i didnt take as many as i'd planned but its pretty easy... just remove all the old trim you reckon is in the way and then clip on the skirt. i imagine the bumpers to be more difficult tho

 

[KillerHERTZ]

''There is also a plastic guard on the rear of the car that needs to be unscrewed with a spanner. Just undo the bolt here as the skirt will just slide in underneath… leaving you with this:''


Not very clear which part you mean mate? could you explain it further?

 

[SilverSaloon]

''There is also a plastic guard on the rear of the car that needs to be unscrewed with a spanner. Just undo the bolt here as the skirt will just slide in underneath… leaving you with this:''


Not very clear which part you mean mate? could you explain it further?

i've updated that post. hope its a bit clearer now. just if you dont loosen the guard the the skirt wont sit flush underneath the car. the guard is the end bit of the rear arch trim.... there is a similar smaller bit on the front of the car, however the skirt can just go over the top of this at the front without any worries.

 

[jaymanek]

Looks very nice, well done mate!

jay

 

[SilverSaloon]

cheers. Not bad. All the stuff was bought second hand + i got facelift front and rear bumpers & facelift wing mirror casings. The guy selling them was fitting an AMG kit to his car so i was lucky to get the whole lot in 1 go. Unfortuantly they were from a silver car and mine is Azurite Blue so I had to respray which cost a bit in paint, but MUCH cheaper than the new parts.

only problem upon picking them up the passenger skirt was badly damaged. looked like a huge hole had been made at some point. it had been repaired (not too well) but i rubbed it all down and re-repaired it and got a very good finish.

attached is a few pics on how I recieved the skirts.

 

[pammy]

Looks great - job well done

 

[pipehose]

looks good seems like a lot of water traps where all those clips came from. did you do those holes with waxol or something when you had them off.. may be worth thinking of for some one elese doing this job

 

[SilverSaloon]

looks good seems like a lot of water traps where all those clips came from. did you do those holes with waxol or something when you had them off.. may be worth thinking of for some one elese doing this job

i didnt no, but cleaned out all the mud that was under there!! probably should have done i suppose