Car Talk — Mercedes owner puzzled why interior dials work again when the car’s loaded down

I have a 2000 Mercedes E320 with 144,000 miles. The temperature and clock dials on the dashboard stopped working after the warranty expired. I went to the Mercedes dealer, and he said it was very costly to fix it. So for the past nine or 10 years, I had no temperature or clock dials. But when I shipped my car from Florida to New York and loaded my...