ON my mother-in-laws' car (1997 SL500 - is that a W129?) every couple of days the fuse that powers the guages in the instrument cluster blows, causing the guages to go dead. My father-in-law has replaced these three or four times now but this keeps happening... any ideas on what to check?

The car is under the Starmark warranty so it'll probably be covered, it's just a matter of curiosity.

Thanks in advance for everyone's help with this. Please send a copy of any responses to wantland474@cs.com if you would. Ken (my father in law) would like to see what the various observations are!

Thanks a bunch.

We had one with those symtoms and the short was in the dome light assy. If it is like ours the problem was evident when we pulled the dome light down and looked at the electronics. There are a number of things in the assy and I forget what was actually shorting, but it was evident on disassembly.

I also had this same type of problem in my W115. Every time I stepped on the brakes the gauges went dead and the fuse blew. Turned out to be a short in one of the rear light assy's. Easy to fix, just a crossed wire.

Good Luck,

I repeatedly lost the same brake light fuse - turned out to be a bare spot on the end of the cigarrette lighter power wire. fixed the lighter, no more fuse problems! Happy Holidays, sounds like you or your tech are going to have an early Easter egg hunt checking everywhere for shorts!