This is TERRIFIC Brian ! .
The PDF file alone is worth the $10 price as it so clearly shows what to do .
FWIW , if your dash lights are super dim or simply never come on (most older Mercedes) , Page two , picture two clearly shows the fault ~ it's the off white square thing with the two copper strips and the single phillips screw ~ this is the dash light dimmer rheostat and you can either replace it with a new one (! $$ !) or , remove the single phillips screw and take it to any Radio / TV Repair shop and have them solder a jumper between the two copper strips , re - install it and marvel at how nice it is to have dash board illumination .
I do not recommend trying to clean or repair the old dimmer rheostat as Tom (a trained Electrical Engineer) and I Journeyman Mechanic and cheapskate fixer-upper extrodinare) both struggled with these things mightily before giving up and soldering the jumper wire to very good effect in the end .
Any time the gauge cluster is out , you should remove the bulbs and replace them _ALL_ they're cheap and this is a job you won't want to do again as it's fiddly .
Cheap skate hard heads (ahem) should remove all the bulbs and wipe them clean with a dust & lint free cloth before re - installing as the tiny amount of dust they get , hinders the flow of lumens . any bulbs with silvery or black ish globes are failing and should be replaced , all junked Mercedes have lots of good used bulbs , you just have no idea how long they'll last .
He also shows what your homemade grounding strap should look like except the true Mercedes Enthusiast / Mechanic would of course know to use a _brown_ colored wire . this color is *VERY* important as some day in the future you may have another Mechanic work on it and he'll know that brown wire is an un fused , un switched grounding sub harness that's important , not some goober repair that should be summarily deleted .
-Nate
Brian In Palm Springs Wrote :
Here's a website that sells an $8 kit for grounding the instrument cluster. Whether you buy the kit or not, there's a link to great instructions for attaching a ground and explaining some of the background of the problem. I need to do this to my 240D as well - just haven't had the time or the nerve to pull the cluster yet.
http://mbelectronicupgrades.com/Supplemental_Ground.html
-Brian in Palm Springs
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