LOVMUFN

Hi everyone, I am new to the forum. I just bought a 1985 500SEL. It has a control panel in front of the shifter, just under the ashtray. It has a few buttons described as follows: crosshairs, fire in crosshairs, fire, a play triangle, and a fast foreword triangle.

What in gods name does this thing do? I pressed all the buttons, some make little lights come on over the buttons, some make numbers come on on a little screen near the buttons. I assume the play makes the number countdown in real time. The fast foreword one makes it all go real fast.

Anyway, I will be parting the car out soon, but I was curious as to what the thing was. I searched quite a bit all over the Internet. But I could not even figure out what the words under the buttons even mean. All I got was "heater" for one of te words.

Thanks!

scorchi0

Hi there, that sounds like it's the control panel for an auxilliary heater. It's a programmable timer that can switch on a heater to warm the car before you get in it if you live in an extremely cold climate.

As far as I know this was never made available as an option on US market cars, so is yours a grey-market private import? I'm not too sure how they work since the heater was never available in Australia either! However, I think you will find the operating instructions are available in the vehicle operators manual.