1997 E420 guages stopped working.

[qualified-merc]

I have a friend who has this car and the instrument gauges stopped working. The gauges do operate intermittently. I have watched several youtube videos on the subject and it appears two things need to happen:

1. Disconnect the negative cable from the battery, wait twenty minutes then re-connect. Start the car and see if this fixes the instrument gauge problem. If this doesn't fix the problem, proceed to step 2. below.

2. Separate the two halves of the gauge cluster and re-solder the connections.

3. Connect a scanner to the OBD port and reset the electrics in the car. One repair tech uses the think car pro scanner and it seems to work well.

In addition, my neighbor has a 2011 Ford F150 truck and the same exact thing happened to her truck. She told me the instrument gauges stopped working. Her truck will not run or start. She told me it went into "limp" mode just before it quit. I believe she has had it towed to the ford dealer for repair.

So....what is it with these instrument gauge/limp mode problems? Are we going to see more of this in our four wheel machines?