Ever since I have had my 125i, the stupid design of the instrument panel lighting has annoyed me.
First, you get the situation where you are driving under trees on a sunny day, and the fuel gauge is lit up beautifully but the speedo isn't.
Second, you have the situation where the auto lights have come on in the evening and the speedo is now lit in orange, but the light sensor on the instrument cluster still thinks it is light, so the bottom half of the cluster is lit in white; finally, half an hour later, the cluster decides to agree with the auto light sensor and turn the bottom of the panel to orange...
I was wondering about this, and I think I could fix the second of these by covering the cluster light sensor with a piece of black tape - that would then mean that the cluster always thinks it is dark and so only ever illuminates the bottom section in orange, which will then always match the top.
A bit of experimentation with a torch this evening revealed that the light sensor on the cluster is a small circle between the speedo and tacho, offset to the right about half-way up - it's visible if you shine a light on it at the right angle. All I'd need to do is get the cluster out, remove the plastic on the front, and put on a square of black insulation tape. Removing the cluster and taking the front plastic off was trivial on an E87 (I had to do it once to rescue a spider that was crawling around inside mine...); I'm assuming it shouldn't be much harder on an F20.
Is this a completely daft idea? Has anyone else tried it?
First, you get the situation where you are driving under trees on a sunny day, and the fuel gauge is lit up beautifully but the speedo isn't.
Second, you have the situation where the auto lights have come on in the evening and the speedo is now lit in orange, but the light sensor on the instrument cluster still thinks it is light, so the bottom half of the cluster is lit in white; finally, half an hour later, the cluster decides to agree with the auto light sensor and turn the bottom of the panel to orange...
I was wondering about this, and I think I could fix the second of these by covering the cluster light sensor with a piece of black tape - that would then mean that the cluster always thinks it is dark and so only ever illuminates the bottom section in orange, which will then always match the top.
A bit of experimentation with a torch this evening revealed that the light sensor on the cluster is a small circle between the speedo and tacho, offset to the right about half-way up - it's visible if you shine a light on it at the right angle. All I'd need to do is get the cluster out, remove the plastic on the front, and put on a square of black insulation tape. Removing the cluster and taking the front plastic off was trivial on an E87 (I had to do it once to rescue a spider that was crawling around inside mine...); I'm assuming it shouldn't be much harder on an F20.
Is this a completely daft idea? Has anyone else tried it?