I have a 1997 S420, this past Friday while driving my dash gauges went dead. When I looked down the speedometer was stuck at 25 mph, tach at 2000 rpm's, gas gauge dead, oil pressure dead, temperature dead, clock dead, all idiot lights at bottom of dash semi illuminated but not full. After stopping and turning ignition off I thought everything would reset but did not. The idiot lights did go off and stopped its faint glow. As of today everything else is the same as it was the day this started. I checked the fuses and all were OK. I also noticed as part of this incident that the buzzer that works with the ignition key iand door s also dead and no longer works.

I did see the "proforma" thread and it is a little different than my situation but I am going to check for fuse box corrosion. Was wondering if anyone had seen this problem before and what the cure was. I had a independant mercedes garage look at it and his guess was it needed a new instrument cluster- cost $1,600.00 At that price I'd like to repair it myself. Hellllllpppp!!
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

lee

had a similar problem one time with a ford (yuck) ranger turned out to be the battery was at fault. power was sent to injectors by the ecm taken away from gauges and radio. i guess it might be worth checking

Found no ecm problems and am not sure about corrosion problem. The brushes (3 in package) from AutoZone did not seem to get enough of the brush into the fuse socket. Does anyone know of a specific brush made for getting inside a fuse socket and where to purchase? The brushes I bought were just too big and the wire on them were too limp to really extract anything. Thanks

lee

Lee
In the control module box (right side of the hood, back towards the firewall) is a module called the Base Module (it has a small window with a few fuses under this window which flips open). CHECK those fuses too.

Gilly

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Thanks Gilly, I'll check that.

Lee

Gilly, when you say right side you mean passenger side right? I know the main fuse box is on driver side. Thanks

Lee

Yes, passenger side, near the hood hinge. The lid (depending on year) is usually screwed down with allen screws, about 5 of them, to get access to that box. Lookj for the module in there with the small clear plastic "window". JUST check the fuses, there will be some "missing" ones, don't worry about that, just check for blown fuses.
Gilly

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Hi Gilly,

Checked the fuses in the control module box but found nothing wrong. I went ahead and put in new fuses as well. I don't know if this means anything but when you put the #17 fuse back in slowly as soon as it makes contact you can hear it make a spark sound. It's not a loud spark and its not noticeable. The #17 fuse is in the main fuse box and it is supposed to be for the instrument panel.

Do you know which fuse controls the ignition buzzer? Thanks.

lee

I'm not sure there is a seperate fuse for that, Lee. I believe the buzzer is built into the cluster, not a seperate item, and doubt there is a dedicated fuse for just the warning. Look through the fuse list, but I doubt you'd see anything.
Gilly

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Gilly, over the weekend I discovered that the electric front seat adjustment is also dead. I went through the fuse box and changed both fuses but this didn't correct the problem. Any idea why these would go out together wnen they are separately fused. Will the computer show a code when the dash gauges shorted out. Thanks for all of your help.

lee

Lee, last year the electric seat controls and window controls in our 1998 E320 mysteriously stopped working. I checked various fuses and found them OK. In disgust I slammed the driver's door ... both sets of controls started working again and no problems since. This isn't a very sophisticated way to fix your problem, but in desperation you might give it a try.

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Thanks Ferdman. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky.

lee

Once when I removed the instrument panel on my 300E i noticed that the ground contact points along the top edge of the panel did not make contact. They had been bent by another's previous attempt to remove the panel. (I believe it was the 300E and not my wife's car).

Try wiggling the panel to see if ground contact has been broken. Or remove it slightly and reset it in place.

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1993 190E 2.3
2000 Toyota 4x4 Tundra