I must be the unluckiest Benz owner in the world! Today, while enjoying a nice ride in my
87 560 SL, the little round aluminum-finished center "button" on the instrument cluster (you know, the cluster that has the gas, temp, and oil pressure guages plus the "economy" vaccum guage) came unglued and fell down, and is now rolling around at the bottom of the inside of the cluster. It rests right in the center of the economy guage, just rolling around aimlessly as I drive. When I accelerate, and the economy guage moves clockwise, the needle actually bumps this round button to the right. When I shut the car off at idle, the needle really kicks to button a lot to the right. These actions mimic a pinball game: the needle is the flipper and the button is the silver ball! I guess to re-glue it, I will have to remove and disassemble the cluster. The question is, how difficult is this to do? Do I have to remove the steering wheel and disassemble the airbag? How difficult is it to remove and disassemble the cluster? Does my car have a speedometer cable, or is that function electronic? I have reasonable mechanical skills- can I do this myself? Has anyone ever heard of this happening before? I have attempted to attach a picture of the cluster with the detached button for purposes of illustration, so I hope this goes with the thread. The car was shut off, so the "flipper" moved the "ball" to the right, as you can see.
On a positive note, I bet I have the only "live" pinball game in a
560! I actually was able to learn how to move this button around today, through a combination of accelerating, decelerating, and stopping and starting fast while driving, and it was kind of fun! If re-gluing it is impossilbly difficult, or too expensive to have an expert do this for me, I may just enjoy this new game I have discovered! Maybe with a little ingenuity, I could incorporate this new game into a cell phone, and sell it to Nokia!
Bob