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