Thread: Dash/Steering Wheel/Comand Retrofit on 1997 W210

OK, I see... apologies if my earlier post implied that I wanted to upgrade the whole car to canbus. That was not my intention -- I just was wondering if anyone knew if the car ALREADY had canbus that could be tapped into for the comand and other functions that I did want to retrofit. Thank you for clarifying.

From other research and emails with MBENZNL it sounds like Mercedes started building the interior canbus on W210 models in February/March of 1997. Unfortunately, my E420 was built in January 1997.

In addition, MBENZNL said they were trying to do a cluster/steering wheel upgrade on an E420 built in August of 1997 and they still were not able to get it to work. MBENZNL said that there are differences on the E420 from other more common W210 models and that may have been the issue.

So, since my car was built in the "pre-canbus" time and Steve at MBENZNL also had trouble with upgrades on an E420 from "canbus" build date, I think that I am NOT going to attempt any major upgrade of cluster. As per my earlier post, I'm also going to get an aftermarket nav unit with more modern functions instead of trying to retrofit Comand.

But I do think that I will simply try to use an updated steering wheel with updated airbag and horn wiring. I *hope* that I can get those to work alone and that it is just a matter of changing the connectors. I will have to study the DIY link above to see if I can sort out which wires need to change for those functions. If the switches/electronics on any part of the new steering wheel/airbag/horn are not of the same technology, then it may not work.

So long as the airbag system is correctly wired the other possible connections are really not going to affect you in any way.