For over 9 years I've fiddled with the dash light rheostat, trying to get it to stay bright enough. It's never been "too bright". Finally, it got to the point I could hardly see anything. So I bent up my little piece of coathanger and pulled the instrument cluster out a bit. The ceramic rheostat housing was chipped and the wiper coil was hanging out. It was really beyond repair. I removed the one screw from the back and unplugged the rheostat. I pried the metal case/clip off and removed the guts. Stripped the ends of a 1" piece of scrap wiring and soldered a jumper across the 2 terminals on the back of the housing. Plugged it back on the back of the instrument panel, replaced the screw, and pushed the panel back into place.

It works great. Perfect brightness for me. no more fooling with that knob. The whole job only took 15 minutes and 1 beer.

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'82 300SD - 361K mi - "Blue"

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

listen, look, .........and duck.