Smart (451) Stuff -- Battery Replacement, Flat Towing, Lights

Nuke-E · June 20, 2016

There's a bunch of random stuff here related to the Smart that I thought I'd put in one place, as I finish up a few things on the one that's getting set up for towing behind my parents' motorhome.

Battery charging/replacement
Wiring for lights for flat towing
Headlight upgrade

Their Smart picked up a nail months ago, and sat parked with a flat long enough that the battery went dead. When I got into town, I thought I'd get the thing charged up and the flat fixed for them before I started into the wiring project. Being a non-Smart (dumb?) guy, I had no idea where the battery was, but found this thing behind the seat:

I'm not in a hurry, so why not? Plug the cigarette lighter ends in, and with nothing turned on, the windshield wipers promptly go from their parked position( = ) to standing straight up ( | | ) and stop. Weird. So I had to turn the key on, the wipers parked, and I turned the key off. Plugged the lighter plug back in, and same thing. Ok, I don't know what prompted that logic, but it's clearly coded in the SAM somewhere. That thing went about charging for a while (slowly), with no signs of life. Eventually I got impatient, and pulled out a lithium battery to jump start it. (No, not from a Chevy Volt. Just a little jumper pack like this). I had to find the battery first, which would have taken forever without a little internet help. For those that don't know, it's hidden under the carpet and a block of styrofoam in the passenger side footwell:

I connected the leads and turned the key on, but it made no attempt to start. I soon noticed the gear indicator was displaying 3 horizontal lines. Hmmm--maybe it doesn't know it's in park? Shifted to drive, and the transmission started doing stuff. Eventually (15 seconds?) it figured itself out and "D" showed up. Started right up after shifting back to neutral. I ran it for a while, but it became clear that the battery was toast. AutoZone had the battery in stock, but $175!! A little bit of digging (and giving the guy at AutoZone a handful of phone numbers) revealed that the battery was still in the free replacement period. It's a vented battery, but with a connection for a vent tube out of the bottom of the battery compartment. The old one came out easy enough, but I had to chuckle at the "DO NOT TIP" warning on the new one--have they seen where it has to go?

I hooked the new battery up, and decided to take it for a quick spin. No start--same 3 lines. Same procedure to get going again.

Now the fun begins--figuring out how to wire up the Smart for flat towing. Ok, well, that's enough fun that it got its own post here. It's still being edited--not at all complicated to hook up, but really confusing to try to figure out.

After all that, and seems how I had some of the front of the car apart anyways, I decided to take a look at the headlights. I figured it would be a slight improvement over the factory lights, which compared to the stock Volvo lights are pretty good. The lights are held in by two screws, one of which is covered by the bumper cover, so it had to be loosened up a little. But once out, it was less than 5 minutes to separate the clear front from the back half of the housing. The projector inside turned out to be a familiar one, used on a lot of Mercedes products, but the aftermarket upgrade wasn't quite going to fit. So I made up a couple of brackets and installed a different projector, which looks like it belongs:

The stock light is first, the upgraded light second. Yes, the covers need polished...

After waiting for it to get dark and driving the thing a little bit, I lined up and took some pictures. First against a garage door, then out "on the road". Here's a short video too.

First the stock light:

Then the Xenon light:

Then both together:

After that, I went out along a dirt road to get a few more shots. First stock:

Frankly, I wasn't expecting nearly as much of a difference as what I ended up with. I think I'm going to leave the driver's side stock for a while--two upgraded lights might be overkill on such a small car.

Brad & Jacolyn · June 21, 2016

Did you get the Smart to start as it should. There should be instructions in the manual for this.

Brad

Nuke-E · June 21, 2016

Brad, once I shifted out of park the transmission did some shifting for a few seconds and then started displaying a gear. After that, it started fine.

Forgot to link the video: http://rvnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Smart-Headlights.mp4 Don't laugh too much--it's a cell phone camera and I'm awful when it comes to editing.