Short In 380sl Cluster?
 

Had to pull the cluster on my 84 380sl to replace odometer gears. When I put the cluster back in my temp guage went all the way to 250 and pegged, also my gas guage is wrong along with the oil pressure. When I turn on the turn signal all the guages go back and forth with the blinker. Also they move when I use the brakes. The only ground I could find is on top of the steering column and that checks out fine. This happened once before and all I did was reinstall the cluster after checking all the connections and it worked fine. Can anybody out there make a suggestion or help?

I had a similar problem when I pulled the instrument cluster on my 500SL. I touched the insulated wire on the right side (facing and probably the clock) to the frame. Right away I knew I'd messed up...but wasn't quite sure of what problem I'd caused myself.

Members of this forum told me I'd grounded out the cluster and suggested I run a new ground wire, which I did. I connected one end of the new ground to the post on the fuel gauge and the other to a good ground behind the cluster. Worked like a charm.

Hope this helps.

Great call. Thats all it took to fix it.

The credit goes to someone else. Wish I could recall who.