I bought my smart 453 roof rack from AliExpress. Click here (make sure you select the correct one for your car). Takes the key... ...place it in the lock and twist to unlock the side cover. Slide the side cover off... ...to reveal the business end of the rack system....
News
451 ED HV Battery Opening
This is the high voltage battery removed form a 451 electric drive fortwo. It's 178kg of nearly unmovable nightmares. All around the outside, if you look carefully, there are discoloured spots along the outside lip. I have marked them yellow below. The discolouring is...
451 ED HV Battery Removal
This job isn't to be taken lightly. You will need some specialist equipment but it can be done at home in your garage if you really have to. Step 1 is that you have to lift the car high enough so you can get the battery out on some sort of trolley. If you have a...
451 ED HV Mega Fuse
If you have a catastrophic high voltage electrical failure, the battery has a safety feature to stop all of that fire, sparks, screaming, running around and gnashing of teeth as everything in the local vicinity also sets on fire. This fault could be a damaged HV cable...
451 ED Battery Cell Charging
Traction Battery Voltage The 451 ED 400 volt traction battery contains 93 separate cells, all wired in series. At an absolute maximum, lithium ion cells should be charged to no higher than 4.2 volts. 93 cells at 4.2 volts = 390.6 volts but they call it a 400 volt...
453 Speedo Wiring
Speedo Pin Number Wire Colours Connects To / Function 1 Pink Illumination 2 Red/White Power Fuse 31 3 Black Earth/Ground 4 5 6 Pink/White or White Cruise Activation 7 White or Brown/White Cruise Reset 8 Green or White Oil Pressure Switch 9 Green/White or Green Brake...
453 Brake Light Failure
My Brake Lights Don't Work! This is becoming a new common problem on the 453 and it's sometimes not you think it is. The issue is that you rarely notice your brake lights aren't working until you miserably fail your vehicle inspection. Because you don't notice brake...
453 EQ Acoustic Presence Switch
If you have an EQ (electric drive) smart 453, it probably has the pedestrian warning noise maker fitted. Some countries didn't mandate them so you'll have to look and listen to know if yours has it. Up until the end of 2019, the car had a switch that could be pushed...
Apple CarPlay On Any Smart
Generally, the easiest option is to just replace the stereo with one that has CarPlay. That's dead easy on the 451 fortwo and 454 forfour as it takes any double DIN stereo so you have a choice of hundreds of stereos. However, it's not so easy on the 450 since that has...
453 Stuck In Park
If your auto gear stick is stuck in the park position, you'll need to press the magic button. Here is the magic lever... ...it pushes up. Thankfully you don't need to disassemble the car as much as is shown abouve to get to the magic lever. You just have to lift the...
451 High Pressure Fuel Pump
Highlighted below is the high pressure fuel pump. It's fed by the low pressure fuel pump in the fuel tank and is spun by the cam shaft. However, to get to this point you have to remove the airbox, intercooler and gear change motor. Disconnect the pipe highlighted...
453 Wipers Will Not Stop
Wipers Won't Stop & Battery Light On Even when the car is off, the wipers keep going continuously. The only way to stop it seems to be to disconnect the battery. However, as soon as you connect it back up, the wipers start going mad again. If you check the errors...
450 Heater Fan Removal
This is an old LHD 450, before the RHD was even available. It'll be similar on a RHD 450 but without the steering column in the way. Post yourself into the nearside footwell and look up and towards the centre of the car. There's the fan unit. Disconnect the electrical...
Air Bag Connectors
450 Fortwo Both the steering wheel and passenger airbag use the same connector. Amphenol CA252 Assuming the link stays live, this connector looks like item 5 here. Have a look around AliExpress and search for hairspring plug and then visually match it to what you...
453 Electronic Controllers
No one seems to know where any of the 453 controllers are or, if they find a controller, they don't know what it is. The main issues that causes confusion with a lot of people is four-fold. 1 - Being a Renault underneath, none of the controllers look like the old...
453 Dashboard Removal
If you want to remove the dashboard, it's a good chance that it's because it looks like this. Airbag go pop. I bought this brand new replacement dashboard direct from smart. December 2022 is cost me £330. Every generation of smart gets harder to remove the dashboard....
453 Glovebox Removal
Removing the glovebox is one of those annoying jobs that requires a lot of other things to be moved around it. This is for a Right Hand Drive car but for a Left Hand Drive it should just be the mirror of what you see below. Pull the surround away from the glovebox....
453 Belt Change
Post yourself under the car on the right hand side. You'll see a cover that partially covers the crankshaft pulley. This sucker has got to go. Grab yourself a 10mm socket and take out all of the bolts that hold the cover to the engine. Get off the floor (make all of...
R-Link: Go To Your Local Dealer
This seems quite rare but some people (mainly Renault owners) are seeing the below fault on the R-Link radio (smart media system). Go to your local dealer No thanks. I found this on a smart EQ I bought that had been lightly crashed. Luckily I had all the replacement...
Coding DAB To 453 R-Link Stereo
If you have the R-Link stereo and don't have DAB radio, you can probably* code it with DDT4All for free in about 5 minutes. Older models of 453 may not have the hardware but that's covered later. This was in a car I was playing with. It had the R-Link stereo but no...