W211 Front Bumper - Protective strip removal?

[Fady]

Hi

Any one know exactly how this is done - I need to get at a parking sensor which has been pushed in.

I hit a bird at speed last weekend (dopey thing was pecking at road kill early a.m. and misjudged my speed). I thought I/it had got away with a few feathers in the mesh of a fog light surround, even after the loud thud. However washing the car today noticed the set back sensor, and stupidly meddled with it, pushing it back even further. Now the darn thing beeps all the time so I have to turn the whole thing off at the start of every journey

I understand that it's just a matter of displacing some clips. But as a sharp impliment will be needed to get behind the strip, it would be nice to hear from someone with experience to save A. breaking a clip or B. scratching paint work.

 

[Chas]

Can you put a small sink plunger over the sensor to create a vacuum and pull it back into place again?

 

[shorty]

The pads will unclip on the preface lift cars . I would not recomend doing this with the bumber still on the car , you will break some clips . I have changed these censors on 211 and 221 and the only way to do the job correctly is the remove the bumper .
The bumper is removed as follows
1 unbolt the 8mm screws between each head light .
2 unbolt the 10mm bolts beside the headlights
3 Remove the lower grill and look up to find 2 more 10mm bolts , remove these
4 on each wheel arch there is 2 small plastic clips , one at the bottom of the bumper and one inside a recess along the wheel arch . pull these out .
5 Now pull back the wheel arch linner and look up to where the wing and bumper meet . There is a C shaped holding bracket along this edge . This is held on with a 20TX screw that screws up , when this is out push the bracked foward and it will come off .
6 Next unplug the 2 spot lights , temp censor and parktronic censors , then slide out the bumper .
Now reclip the loos censor and refit the bumper ,

 

[Fady]

Chas/Shorty thanks for your replies. The first thing I did was hold the end of a vacuum cleaner over it (!) - so unfortunately that's not going to work.

I've been up and down the internet trying to get the resolution and what I have found out so far is that the protective strip is designed to be removable, and though you obviously managed to get your bumpers off, this I guess is a little cumbersome and needs several pairs of hands. You then have to unclip all the sensors, support the bumper, protect the paintwork etc.

A lot of the guys Stateside swop off their bumper strips which have amber turn signals in and replace them with the cleaner European version. The crux for me is they don't say how! Also, a chap on the Mercedes Club forum who had an identical problem posted pictures of his hanging out (if you'll pardon the expression), but again didn't say how he got there.

I'm currently trying to get hold of a page out of the workshop manual (page ref is AR88.80-P-2220T) which allegedly explains how to set about this, so I've just ordered a copy of the WIS DVD off ebay.

I went into my dealer on Saturday hoping to either get some tips or learn how much they would want to extort out of me to do it, but typically I left with neither. Chap on service desk said "one technician in...already working on 3 jobs at once...too busy to talk, but yes you should be able to prize it out - if you'd like to (inconveniently) drop your car by in the week...".