MyE28.com

Greetings all,

In repairing my 1985 535i automatic, I find one of the lights in the gear indicator is burned out - of course it's the "D" light. To buy a replacement online the best I can find is around $170 - definitely not worth it. My question is whether anyone's gotten a light replaced in one of these boards? If so, was it successful?

Ken

should be simple. I have a couple boards from clusters but since I have a manual, I have not worried about swapping lamps. Should be just a solder it in sort of swap. Of course using an appropriate bulb is the key.

I would swap the low gear lamp to the D position and stuff something into the low gear position.

The bulb is the same as the other 1.2w bulbs in the cluster. To solder in a new one you'll need to remove/break the 3 plastic pegs that hold the plastic carrier to the circuit board and then securely reattach (glue?) it afterwards.

Of the three of these I've looked at recently, all the D's were burnt out. If the pinpoint soldering or kludging the carrier back on sounds iffy, consider that unlit D an advanced feature and throw it back in the car

I bought a couple of those little bulbs from autozone.

Do you know the part number of that bulb?

I actually like the fact that D is burned out. I even have a spare light unit (thanks Kohler)...I'll likely put it in if I ever sell the car, but for now I really don't need to be told the car is in drive.

Reviving this old post, automatic vehicle. I don't have a burnt-out light; that's easy to fix, but the gear indicator lights glow very dimly when the headlights are on, even with the dimmer set to maximum. Is there a circuit component that "wears out" over time and could be replaced to improve the gear indicator illumination?

I remember that when these cars were new, the shift indicator would glow very brightly when the headlights were on (it dimmed slightly compared to when the lights were off, but not so much that it was invisible).