My newly acquired 300TD has some strange electrical gremlins - like, when I put the head or side lights or indicators on, the fuel gage goes to 100%. Anyway, I substituted my spare instrument cluster {from a 200TE} and the problem disapears - turns out I have two burnt tracks on the board that supports the fuel gage, oil pressure & coolant temperature - both tracks are the earth return tracks.

So, I consider repair or just substitute - whilst examining the spare cluster I find that too has two burnt tracks - but this time different tracks - one track each side of the rhoestat that powers the dashboard lamps.

So, am I just unlucky or is this a weak spot in these cars?

I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to proceed here - it is possible that I damaged my spare trying it asa substitute in the car - so I'm going to work thru all the 15 pins on that rear connector and see if I have any ground faults which could explain the large current draw - any advice welcomethough.
STeve