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.

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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.