I had my instrument cluster out loose since I was still doing work on it (I put on white face gauges, painted the needles, replaced my celcius outside instrument gauge with a farenheit one, and then I was planning on replacing the dash bulbs with cool blue ones). A few nights ago, I was driving and all of a sudden... the dash lights went off. Then today I pulled the instrument cluster to find out the cause of the problem and I saw my rheostat was gone. It must have fallen off and is now down where I can't reach it. Funny incident.

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1999 Mercedes-Benz S600, 103K miles - garage queen
1988 Mercedes-Benz 560SEL, 89K miles - daily driver
2007 Hyundai Sonata Limited, 31K - daily driver