Yesterday I replaced or rather swopped for now the lights illumination on the left hand side air vent switch becuase the little globe was blown. It is a 124 '88 260e. As I was putting it back I must have shorted it by mistake and now everything doesn't light up on any instrument. Its not one of the fuses is the fuse box and everything else works including everythng on the same fuse as the illumination. What on earth could it be? PLease can someone help!

There is a little red fuse on the back of the instrument cluster. it looks just like the warning/turn signal light bulb sockets only it is red instead of black. see if that little fuse is blown.

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2005 Mercedes C230k sport sedan, 6 speed
1987 Porsche 924S - 968-engined track car

the resistor is fine becuase the lights for the intrsument cluster still work but I will have a look if the fuse is blown tommorow, I reckon that is it so thanks alot but I will reply with progress.

Almost need to make this a sticky:

Disconnect the battery when working on your car!!! Especially when working with ANYTHING that has wires attached to it, even if you aren't fixing an electrical issue!

It may be PITA to resync the convertible top operation, jog the steering wheel to reinitialize the BAS/ESP or rekey the security codes on your radio, but it certainly beats frying some component that costs 10 or 100 times as much as the part you were trying to replace!

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2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
2001 CLK430 Cabriolet (80K) - Wife's car
2005 BMW 645CI (138K) - My daily driver
2016 Mustang (32K) - Daughter's car

YEs thank you very much everyone for your help, yes I know I should have disconnected the battery however I wanted to test if that light still worked, but non the less it was the fuse behind the instrument cluster and here in South Africa it costs about R6 for a new one so luckily a small price to pay for my mess up! Thanks Again