Roadster Stalk In A Fortwo

Mod Description
The fortwo headlight stalk is silly money compared to the Roadster, lets save money.
Mod Details
PremiumNo Difficulty Mod ID660 CreditEvilution Cost£ï¿½2 For450 Fortwo452 Roadster Linkhttps://dev.evilution.co.uk/mod/roadster-stalk-in-a-fortwo.htm Copy to Clipboard

Let’s be honest, none of us ever use the headlight adjusters when we load the boot up. So why bother buying the Fortwo light stalk with the built in adjuster if it costs more? The Roadster light stalk has the same fittings and same connections so will fit right in. If you fit it with no modifications, the headlight levelling system will be deactivated.

The back part of the stalk housing could be swapped over but due to the way the stalk wires are soldered, it would be a nightmare and you’d probably kill both stalks in the process.

I Want A Stalk With An Adjuster

Best you go and buy the proper stalk then because it isn’t worth the time and effort required in swapping the adjuster internals over to a Roadster light stalk.

OK, I Don’t Need The Adjuster

Just fit the Roadster light stalk as it is then. There are 2 drawbacks though. If your headlights move out of alignment, they won’t adjust themselves. You will have a hole underneath to the left of the steering column. Not really noticeable.

If you have headlight adjusters that are faulty and making a continuous noise, fitting the Roadster light stalk will make them shut up.

I Want The Lights To Self Align

If you don’t ever adjust the headlights but would like the headlight adjusters to keep themselves level you can fool the car into thinking that the adjuster is set to a specific position. Below shows 2 stalks, the upper one is the fortwo stalk with the 3 position adjuster. The one below is the standard Roadster stalk with no built in adjuster.

What you will notice though is the Roadster stalk still has the required adjuster pins (circled).

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So all we need to do is solder to these pins to make the car think there is an adjuster. Below is a close up of the adjuster PCB, it has 3 wires and 4 resistors.

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X Comparator 1
Y Power in
Z Comparator 2
W Power in, connected to Y
0 Adjuster position 0 pad
1 Adjuster position 1 pad
2 Adjuster position 2 pad
A 249 Ohm
B 1690 Ohm
C 267 Ohm
D 301 Ohm

Power comes in via Y, across the PCB to pad W. From there, the adjuster decides which route the power will take which affects the voltage readings at X and Z.It uses a comparator which compares 2 voltages to come to a particular setting.

Position 0
Pin Ohm rating Resistors
X 249 A
Z 2258 D,C,B
Position 1
Pin Ohm rating Resistors
X 550 D,A
Z 1957 C,B
Position 2
Pin Ohm rating Resistors
X 817 C,D,A
Z 1690 B

The resistors are placed in series so you add the ratings together to get the total.So, if you want to fool the car into thinking the adjuster is set to 0 (normal setting) you solder a 249 Ohm resistor between Pins X and Y and solder a 2258 Ohm (2.258 Kilo ohm) resistor between Pins Y and Z.

Although this sound simple it may not be that easy to get those exact ratings.

249 ohm resistors are available from Rapid Electronics but you won’t find a 2258 ohm resistor.

You will have to make that resistance from 2 or 3 resistors in series. You could go for the standard 1.69k ohm (Rapid part number 63-1070), 267 ohm (not yet found) and 301 ohm (Rapid part number 63-1124). Or try a 2.26k ohm (Rapid part number 63-1308). It may be close enough to do the job. Alternatively, if you are up to the job, you could use surface mounted resistors as in the original, in which case you should have no problem finding them.

SMD codes are:
A = 2490
B = 1691
C = 2670
D = 3010