MB Medic Mercedes-Benz Repair Guides, Service, How To DIY
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In this guide (6 sections)
The R-Class gives you two center consoles, one in front and one between the second row seats, and the rear one is the reason people end up on this page. It sits exactly where a child needs to climb through to reach the third row, which makes the school run slower than it needs to be. It lifts out without tools, and it also slides between two positions, which is the option most owners never find.
Instructions
Follow these instructions to remove the center console on an R-Class. This guide applies to the R320, R350, R500, R550 and R63 AMG from 2006 through 2012.
- Open the rear door and access the rear center console.
- Locate the center console release at the front.
- Pull the lever up.
- Lift the center console up and remove it.
- Remove the center console from your R Class.
Note that the center console has two mounting positions.
You can install it all the way forward or backward.
The base of the center console cannot be removed.
What you actually gain, and what you do not
This is the part worth knowing before you spend ten minutes under the car thinking you have missed a bolt. The console you can lift out is the upper section, the lid and the storage bin. The base it sits on is part of the floor structure and does not come out, so you are not going to end up with a flat floor between the second row seats.
What you do get is the thing most people are actually after: an open walkthrough to the third row at head height, so a child can climb between the second row seats instead of being lifted over a lid. The floor hump stays, the obstruction at knee and chest height goes.
If what you want is cargo width rather than walkthrough access, the console out gains you the height of the bin and nothing else, because the base is still there. That is usually not worth losing the storage for.
The middle option most owners miss
The console mounts in two positions, forward and back, and that is a genuinely useful setting rather than a detail. Slid to the rear position it moves out of the walkthrough and sits closer to the third row, which keeps the storage, the cupholders and the armrest while still opening up the gap kids climb through.
So try the rear position before you commit to taking it out and finding somewhere in the garage to keep it. It takes the same ten seconds, and most owners who remove the console entirely end up wanting the storage back once the school year ends.
One thing to check as you lift it clear, whichever you choose: look underneath for a connector. On some trims there is wiring running into this area, and a connector pulled rather than unplugged is a much worse afternoon than the job you started.
While the console is out, look at the carpet
With the console lifted you can get a hand onto the floor between the second row seats, and on a W251 that is worth doing. Press into the carpet and the padding underneath, and smell your hand.
Water that gets past a blocked sunroof drain, a door membrane or the cowl drains collects on the floor and under the rear seat, which on these cars is where control units and connectors live. Damp carpet is not a carpet problem. It is the start of corroded connector pins, and corrosion at one connector on a Mercedes can produce a long list of apparently unrelated electrical faults, because every module shares a data bus. We have a full case study of exactly that: a car with eight unrelated faults that all came back to water at one connector.
If you find it dry, you have lost thirty seconds. If you find it wet, you have just saved yourself a diagnostic bill, because finding damp carpet deliberately is far cheaper than finding it after the faults start.
And if corrosion has already reached a module, the quote is usually for a replacement unit that has to be coded to the car. Module Medics repair Mercedes SAM, COMAND and other control units at board level and send your own unit back with its coding intact, which is the cheaper route once water has already done its work. Fix the leak first, though, or the repaired module simply corrodes again.
Does this job need any diagnostics?
No, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than selling you something. There are no tools, no torque figures and no fault codes involved in lifting out a trim panel, and nothing to reset afterwards.
Where a YOUCANIC UCAN-II Pro earns its place on an R-Class is everything else on a fifteen year old car: reading the SAM modules, the airbag system and the transmission rather than only generic engine codes, which is what a basic code reader is limited to. It covers nearly everything Xentry does apart from online VIN coding. Useful on this car, just not for this job.
Related reading
Before you buy parts, scan every control module, not just the engine. It shows the root fault behind the warning lights and tells you whether the problem is still active. See how to do a full health check.
