I have an '04 CLK500 Cabriolet that got rained on with the top down several years ago. The interior was removed and ALL the wiring dried and all was perfectly well for 2 years and 20000 flawless miles. All of the sudden(co-incidently while I was putting the top up with a picture frame in the car that prevented the top from closing and then... )the dash went nuts! The car died but restarted after waiting for the computers to reset and I was able to drive it home(300 miles). The dash looked like a Christmas Tree! Overheat, ABS,ESC, hard shifting, speedo flipping out, gas guage quitting,then everything came back for a second and all was well until it repeated. WTF!!! Every mechanic wants to replace what they don't think is working...but everything worked fine until it all went haywire. I feel that there is some common thread here that is simply being overlooked and no one is looking in the right place! Any suggestions?

 

disconnect the battery for awhile, let the whole thing just reset itsself and see what happens

 

Call ghostbusters!

 

Sounds like corrosion may have finally caught up after the soaking. In reality though, a few members here (including myself) had the instrument cluster go nuts, I just had to do a hard-reset and all is fine now.

 

I do know that here in New Zealand, people are hesitant of buying Singapore imports because of the wiring. From the temperature change the wiring literally dissolves, that may be the issue in your case... But I have no idea.

 

Why were you trying to close the top even though the picture frame was too big? Also, why would you let it rain inside the car while the top is down? I don't care if I was delivering a baby, if it started raining and my top was down, I'm going to fix it.

You might look into a honda element or something.