Well, my '88 W126 has some cluster issues and wondering what to do. Well, ALL lights and gauges work fine, but my odometer/trip odometer stopped working about a month ago. Also my outside temperature display is "blackening out" more and more to where I can more often not than often read the 2nd digit of the temperature.

Are these LCDs only replaceable, or does the entire cluster have to be replaced? With that issue and the non-working odometer combined, would it be cheaper to buy a brand new cluster (if thats even possible) or have the odometer and LCD temp readout replaced?

Either way, how do I go about doing this?

(btw, the car is a 1988 300SEL with 156K showing, but it has about 158K now - the odometer has only been inoperable for about 2 months and I only drive the car about 100 miles per week).

The temp readout is easily removable. I bought one off e-bay for $25, a new one is $400 or more. Your odometer can swapped out too, or likely repaired.

I have at least one spare LCD temp-display for a 126, I believe they are in Celcius however. List is around $400, used they usually sell for around $30, let me know if you are interested.

The odometer is a different problem, on most Mercedes (and most VDO from the the early '90s and before) the pinion gear slides along the shaft and loses contact with the worm-gear driving it. You need to pull the cluster, remove the speedometer from the back, and push everything back together (preferrably with a little epoxy or shaft knurling). Most times the gear is not damaged.

__________________

Gone to the dark side

- Jeff

The odometer is probably "electric" and there are soft rubber gears that have probably turned to goo after all the years. Buying new gears (around $70) will solve this conclusively.

__________________
86 560SL
With homebrew first gear start!
85 380SL
Daily Driver Project

http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl/mercedes.htm

Thanks for that. I will see if I can find a used LCD. I would like to have a F° than a C° reading. My car has the F°. My 84 190D and 85 380SE had the C° temp readouts and I hated it. Thanks for the offer though.

Thanks for the tips on the odometer... I will figure out how to remove it and see if I can get it working again. I think what happened too is that I was using the trip odometer as kindof a gas gauge, because my gas gauge is kinda inaccurate and I would refill at 300 miles. I never should have kept resetting the trip odometer.

How do I go about changing the LCD? Cluster come out of that too? Thanks!