rev counter dial slipped around, repair

[wub]

I thought i'd put this up, may help others. I noticed my rev counter dial (r129 1998) had slipped around to the left so it was not sitting straight. i looked around on the web and found quite a few others with same thing. So i took mine apart (getting the instrument cluster out was a real pig, more on that on another post) and expected to see that the whole unit had come loose and shifted around. But once apart, i could see that that cant happen, merc's designed it too well to just slip around. What had happened was the black dial had slipped around. This is glued on and after trying to lift it, to move back, i realized i was going to damage it trying.

So i carefully warmed the dial up with a heat gun, being very carfull not to over heat or melt anything. Once the dial was nice and warm, it pealed up easily and was easy to move back around and stick back down. These must move when they get very hot on a summer days and be slightly heavier on the left and slowly slip around as it seems to be a common problem! That is kind of proved as there are a lot more issues of this in the states than here in the UK, (what hot sunny days i hear you say

 

[DREAMER NO2]

Looks like you found the reason for the slipping dial . All those i have had to repair have had very small screws to retain them .Looks like Mercedes and the company who make the rev counter,, in their wisdom chose to make it easy to assemble them and cut out an operation to drill and tap them. M,ay be a retainer on the bottom will stop the dial moving down the next time,, after the warm weather warms up the glue.

 

[LostKiwi]

Only seems to be an issue on cars with electronic odometers. Earlier mechanical odometer cars don't seem to get the same issue.