C280 Petrol gauge and speedometer being flaky

[danvesma]

Hi,

My new (to me) '95N C280 has a couple of issues ont he dash that I wonder if i could get your input on. I'd like to know if these problems are likely to be independent of one another, or an actual dashboard issue.

The speedo sticks to the peg until I reach third gear, at which point it pops up and appears accurate.

The fuel gauge always reads empty when I start the car, but 'catches up' any time between 2 and 10 minutes later.

I know the car had a replacement (second hand) wiring loom about a year ago to fix a missfire, and I'm hoping that something has gone wrong there and the dashboard just needs to be plugged in properly.

Your thoughts or advice would be gratefully received.

Kind Regards,

Dan

 

[bigasotonuk]

Hi,
Speedo is/was quite a common issue, the stop peg becomes slighty sticky, you will need to take the cluster apart and clean the peg, this should solve your issue.
Fuel gauge, it is quite common for one of the senders to go, but this would normally be accompanied by an inaccurate display when working, I have a similar issue with my fuel gauge, just run a decent fuel system cleaner through it, should fix it. Apparently using the wrong grade fuel and/or continued use of cheap supermarket fuels will contaminate the variable resistor on the sender leaving a coating on it causing the issue.