There is no illumination on my clocks or heater switches any more - fuses check out. Also the tacho sticks, sometimes forces a few miles onto clock, but appears to have a bad stick in the cogs - is this common? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance MB folk.

I strongly suspect that you are experiencing multiple problems. The instrument light problem is most likely the potentiometer. Since the brightest setting is not bright enough, it's best to just bridge the potentiometer to get permanently full bright instrument lights.

The instrument problems are most likely the individual instruments themselves. Sometimes the trip odometer gets sticky and causes problems with the odometer.

Good luck,

thats what i did and it works great. a new dash. its easy to do all u need is a phillips head and a flat prying device, like a flat head screwdriver.

the dash slides straight out, though some prying may be nessesary, just dont break the plastic (a hook tool works best here). the potentiometer is a white ceramic square that comes off by unscrewing a phillips screw, and then it pulls straight out. bridge the 2 prongs with any wire.

Thanks Chaps. Will try tomorrow and let you know.

If your odometer "slips a cog" you might as well epair it while you have the cluster removed to bridge the light potentiometer. Do a search here as well as the diesel forum for odometer repair, or similar topic. It is a pretty easy repair, and sounds more tedious than it is. In a nutshell, the pot meteal cog is a press fit on its shaft. Over time it get loose and slips. Remove the shaft by pressing it out using a same-size shaft to keep all the wheels in place. I used the shaft on which the reset mechanism pivots. After you have the shaft out, you need to slightly deform the shaft where sits the metal cog--some use a small punch mark, I used a set of vise grips to "knurl"it slightly. Replace the shaft, and you're done.