BMW E36 Blog

This DIY (Do It Yourself) is a contribution by Daniel Castro, thanks Daniel. In the following text, you will find a detailed procedure on how you can remove your gauges cluster and disassemble it in order to replace your OEM gauges with the Plasma type. I know that almost everyone here is looking for these gauges but unfortunately I couldn’t find them on the German eBay where I found them for the first time. I’m not sure where you can get them from now, but I will keep looking and hopefully I will find them. Daniel, do you know where I can get this from? If you want to know how they should look like after you finish, take a look at the BMW E36 With Plasma Gauges and BMW E36 with blue interior LED lights . . . Wow!

Disclaimer: Use this info at your own risk!! The author is not responsible if this didn’t work for you :-).

1. Removing Screws:

Remove upper Left & Right screws using a 4 cornered screw driver. Once removed, use a flat screw driver to remove the whole unit from above.

2. Removing Sockets:

Pull the unit until the wires at the back are exposed. Remove the sockets by pushing the lever upwards or to the direction shown above. 3 sockets are to be removed, Black, Blue and White.

No need to remove the Steering Wheel, adjust it to the lowest position. After all the sockets are removed, just slowly slide the unit to the right side of the steering wheel, as shown below…

3. Unit Disassembly:

Use a #T-9 screw driver (hex shaped) to remove the screw (3 pcs) as shown below. Then Lift the level locks on the left & the right.

Lift both levers at the same time. Notice the outer back cover is lifted. Now, you will see 3 stick locks, Rotate the white locks wrapped around the black plastic poles.

Afterwards, you may separate the front cover from the middle part.

In my case, I have not locked them back, so I can easily lift or separate the middle part along with the back part. As shown below…

Using two flat screws, or anything that can lift the needles (of the Instrument Cluster).

BEWARE : The Needle pins are very SENSITIVE, as it can easily be bent.

Once all five needles are removed, remove the smaller hex shaped screws and place the Illuminating gauge face.

Placing the needles back is tricky, I recommend you rotate the pin by 45 degrees, hold it down, then place the needle slowly, pointing to 0 or minimum.

Reverse the whole process to install it back to it’s original place.

Are you looking for more do it yourself procedures (DIY) ? I recommend the Bentley BMW 3 series service manual for you. I got it and I think it’s a gold mine for us -BMW E36 Owners-. If you didn’t grab your copy yet, get it right now! I’m sure you’ll find this book worth every penny you’ve paid for. Get the Bentley BMW 3 series service manual

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Hi,

I’ve found this video for a BMW E36 with Plasma gauges. I have to admit, the color mix is not the best I saw (especially with that Cyan color on the outer circles), but it looks nice though. Please let me know what do you think? BTW, check my previous posts BMW E36 with blue interior LED lights and BMW E36 With Blue Interior LED Lights . . . Revisited to read more about these gauges.

This is the video

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.

I wrote before about a BMW E36 with blue interior LED lights conversion process. In that post, I presented a video with a modified BMW E36 and it looked great!. After that, I did some research to gather more information about how this process is done. It turned out that all the parts should be removed and the amber lights inside them should be replaced with blue LEDs (Light Emission Diodes). This can be accomplished with some intense work and care.

What I felt missing from this process is the gauges conversion. If you saw the video in my previous post, you will notice the red needles on the blue gauges. I was unclear about how this should be done until I found the owner of that car (DJ Genius). I’ve contacted him and asked him about these gauges and how he made the conversion. It turned out that these gauges are actually sold as one piece on the German Ebay and for a really great price (49 EUR). Check them out here.

I believe this is really nice and will make your car stand out from the crowd. So what do you think of such a conversion? Is it really cool or what?

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate E36 information source.

Hello, I’ve found this video for a BMW E36 couple days ago with a problem in its OBC (On Board Computer). As I recall, the owner said that he just finished doing an upgrade from 11-button to 18-button OBC and that the car keeps beeping and that is driving him crazy. When I saw the video, I forgot about the problem he was asking about because another thing has grabbed my attention. The owner has made some great deal of modifications to the interior lights of his BMW E36. The idea was to convert all the interior lights in the car from amber (original) into blue. I know that many of you here will not like the idea because it needs too much work. Others may say that I don’t like to mess with the original setup of the car, but after you see this video, I think you’re going to change your minds.

When you watch the  video, pay attention to the blue gauges, m3 logo, red needles (veery cool) and the OBC. I know it seem like unfinished job, but it’s really cool and the lights on the dashboard are very bright not like the standard amber. In the next few days, I will keep on searching about how this job was done and I hope I will be able to find a DIY for that. I expect that DIY to be very long, but I believe it really deserves the effort. Check it out below and please feel free to drop me some lines telling me if you like this setup or not.

Check it out!

I hope you liked the video . . . if not, come on let’s see your videos 😉

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