My 2000 CLK 430 had the usual problem with the time and temp and gear indicator. I do electronics repair so I looked into it. There are three ribbon cables in it. One has copper in it and it is the center one that doesn't seem to cause problems. Also has a connector on the end of it. All three are liquid crystal displays and have back lights. The two outer ones have what looks like aluminum in them. It is a very thin strip between two pieces of flexible plastic. There are a couple of small rubber pieces that keep them pressed up against some copper foil pads on the circuit boards. I took mine off and cleaned up the copper and used a conductive pen to redo the aluminum traces with silver conductive paint. I used thin clear tape to mask each trace out and then a small brush to repaint the traces. It works fine now with all of them nice and sharp. WARNING this is not an easy job and I used a binocular microscope to work under. Also be carefull not to pull the ribbon cable loose from the glass plate of the liquid crystal display. Jerry