Other lighting problem on the 2008 Mercedes Benz C300
3 fires 3 of the 41 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When other lighting problem gets reported
Owners of the 2008 Mercedes Benz C300 report other lighting problem at a median of 75,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 55,000 miles and a quarter after 102,500 miles, from 32 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 86,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 40,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 140,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 99,606 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
6% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40,394 miles | 55,925 miles | 74,473 miles | 103,050 miles | 140,000 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 3 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $120–$1,200 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 4 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2010, at a median of 50,000 miles, and latest on the 2011 at 90,000 miles.
By volume the 2008 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Turn signals and wipers / windshield washers cease to operate until car is restarted. Wipers continue to operate in rain sensing mode but not via the wiper control level. Dealer was not able to find any diagnostic codes afterward. Failure recurred a few days after dealer inspection, and occurs sporadically both in urban and highway driving. Time between failure ranges from hours to multiple months. *tr
The tail lights of my mercedes benz c300 2008 stopped working. When I went to my local mercedes dealer to see what is wrong with the car, the service person at the dealership immediately told me that they were fully aware what was wrong with the car without even looking at it. They said that the plastic covers of both real tail lights along with the wire harness had melted. In fact, the service person put his hand back there and he got burned because the entire wire assembly was melted and was short. I asked them to repair the car for free because this is a defect since the wire harness assemblies and plastic tail cover lights should not melt under any conditions. This is both a collision hazard and a fire hazard and it is very common in this model. Mercedes benz usa refused to fix the vehicle for free as they have an obligation to do since this is a defect. Please issue a recall for the plastic cover and wire harness of the real tail lights of this vehicle because this situation is dangerous both in terms of a fire hazard and in terms of a collision hazard. *tr
Passenger tail wire harness has melted to the connector and the lamp holder. This is because the connector pins used for the ground wire cannot simply handle the load. I am not sure how the passed the mb quality control. This could easily be a fire hazard. Mb dealership recommended the same pin connector to fix but I'm sure this will happen again. I am filing this incase my car burns because of the issue. *tr
Also reported on the 2008 Mercedes Benz C300
Airbag inflator rupture
No-start or intermittent start failure
Other electrical problem
Tail light, brake light or signal failure
Other steering problem
Wiring harness or short circuit
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 41 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other lighting problem happen on the 2008 Mercedes Benz C300?
Across 32 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 75,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 55,000 miles and a quarter after 102,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other lighting problem on the 2008 Mercedes Benz C300?
41 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 3.9 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed