Dashboard Display Blues: 2002 S500
 

This afternoon I cleaned up some sticky residue that was on each of the steering wheel's push buttons. It took a while to get it off, but once that happened something truly strange took place.

First, the battery went dead. No big deal. I jump started and all seemed fine until... nothing.

Dashboard display wasn't lighted at all.

Turn signals didn't work.

Voice activation stalk didn't work.

I went to the nearby shop and had all the fuses in the engine bay tested. They all checked out fine. Next, I believe the box under the rear seat was tested. Although I didn't see it tested, I'm assuming that all was fine there as well.

My mechanic said that there were at least four different computers on this thing and that I should take it to a dealer. If that's my last option, so be it. But I was hoping someone here may be able to point me in the right direction.

Did I possibly deactivate something by having all those steering wheel buttons touched so many times?

Did the cleaner possibly cause a living hell to unfurl behind the steering wheel?

Should I just wait a day and pray?

Of course the instrument cluster has a 10 year warranty as about 25% of them were defective. Back lighting issues.

As far as the other items go, scanning the steering column module would be my 1st point of diagnosis.

Before you take it into the dealer, why don't you try a hard re-set? Just dis-connect both cables from the battery and touch them together for a few seconds. I use this technique all the time to restore functionality to mis-behaving electronics.