Cheap trick to restore instrument lighting - '81 300D
 

Hi all,

This may be old news to you all, but I just figured out a cheap trick to get around a bad instrument cluster light potentiometer (on the back of the cluster). There are two hollow rivets in the back of the pot that connect circuit leads to the interior of the pot. My pot was "rotting" out - the plastic shell is turning to powder and falling apart. I just made a little jumper out of solid copper wire and friction-fit it into the rivets, thus bridging the pot. I don't particularly care if the lights are dimmable - they are pretty dim at full brightness - so I may not bother to actually replace the pot...

pot
 

Just great. I just bought 500 shares of Potentiometer.Com this morning thinking I was going to clean up on all these MB owners. Should I sell?

Great work, those things are a nusiance. I have a new one in the garage, and after measuring it's peak resistance I may try soldering in a reasonable value resistor on some of my old ones. Any idea of the wattage the potentiometer dissipated?