License plate light (82)

Rear view of the MB 219 from the early 80ies, license plate lights clearly visible. KAK reflexes on the lid in order not to have to drill holes for extra reflexes in the bumpers in order to fulfill the "reflex law" in Sweden at that time.

Also in this case were the lights in good condition. The old glass pieces were however broken. When I disassembled the license plate lights, I thought that the screws were supposed to hold the glass together with nuts. That is obviously not the case, the screws’ threads hold the plastic glass itself! Three new pieces of glass were bought, two NOS and one used but in very good condition. I also had to buy a couple of NOS glass screws. You can of course buy new screws but their heads won’t fill up the hole in the light housing as the should. All six were re-chromed.

I bought new gaskets a couple of times, never getting gaskets that would fit or were very hard NOS. I decided to go for soft EPDM rubber thread, 2mm thick, and glue my own. Worked perfectly.

Also the sealing between the rear plate and the housing was difficult to get. There are a number of versions of the license plate light and obviously it’s hard for the parts supplier to get it right… As you can see in the third and fourth pictures below, the drawing and the comparison between sealings, the sealing is supposed to have the rear plate seal both towards the trunk lid and the light housing.

The rear plate s themselves also posed problems for me. The glass towards the trunk didn’t look good and it’s not easily replaceable (possible at all?) . Unfortunately, I had it laying in white spirit for some time in order to see if the dirt would dissolve. It didn’t. Instead the plastic glass got slightly soft. I tried to polish the glass with “Polywatch”, a product for restoring plastic glass to its former brightness but did only partly succeed. Mr Magno from the US was able to provide me with rear plates in better condition. It’s now ok but the rear plates are candidates for future improvements efforts. The best thing would be to find new, old stock parts or decent ones that I dared to have re-plated.