I have mentioned in my previous post Turning Your BMW Lights On Automatically At Night . . . System Testing that while I was trying to get the auto light inside my E36 to work, I’ve burned something. Actually, what I have burned was the Trip Odometer LCD light. At first, I thought this is something really serious and that I have to pay some serious bucks to solve the problem, but after some research, it turned out that it’s actually a bulb in the cluster that needs to be replaced. Piece of cake, right? So, I followed the steps in Installing Silver Gauge Cluster Rings for your BMW . . . DIY! post to remove the gauge cluster. It’s a really good DIY (Do It Yourself). Anyway, please follow these steps for a quick guide on how to do this nice fix.

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

Take a look at my Trip Odometer LCD light. It’s not working and my cluster looks really bad and ugly. Isn’t it?

To start the fix, you will need to remove the gauge cluster. You can start by removing the screws that hold the gauge cluster. There are two of them at 11 & 1 clock. Take a look at these:

When you remove the screws, simply push the bottom of the cluster to the back a little bit and it will move. After that you will need to pull it slowly and carefully. The ultimate target is to slide the gauge cluster from behind the steering wheel like this:

You will notice that there are some wires that are connected to the cluster and they will prevent you from sliding the cluster out. There are three of them, one on the right and two on the left. Take a look at the following (it’s the one on the right)

Before removing it, please disconnect your battery. I didn’t disconnect it and a warning sound started out. I don’t know what this sound was, but it was really annoying. So, I say unplug your battery to make sure the process goes as smooth as possible.

IMPORTANT: If you have the OEM radio from BMW, do NOT disconnect your battery unless you’re 100% sure that you have the PIN code that can unlock your radio.

Removing the three wires is a real pain and they need a lot of attention, but eventually you can do it. When you unplug these wires, you will be able to slide the gauge cluster out. Now turn it and look at the back, here’s the light that needs to be replaced.

Using a flat screwdriver, you can remove that light. Now, here’s a thing that really shocked me. I had the light that I’m going to use as a replacement right here and these lights are usually just pull-out and put the new one instead PERIOD. Surprisingly, this was not the case here. The light was stuck and not going to be pulled out easily as I previously thought, so I had to remove it from it’s plastic cavity to find out that the light bulb is connected to the light connectors. Take a look:-

God damn it! So, I thought, ok lets cut the old bulb wires and solder the new wires instead, but to my surprise AGAIN , it didn’t hold. So I finally was able to squeeze the new bulb inside the plastic cavity in a way its wires will be connected to the steel connectors. After that, I tested the bulb and it worked.

Alright, now the nightmare has ended! So, I put everything back in the reverse order and here’s the result. A clear trip odometer LCD . Awesome!

So, what do you think? Isn’t that a cool fix or what?

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Before I start this post. There’s one thing that is really confusing me? Why I’m not getting any response for these articles from you guys? Don’t you like to make your car headlights turn on automatically like the 200X cars? Isn’t that cool? Come on people, let me hear what you think good or bad .

I wrote four articles until now about how you can make your BMW lights turn on automatically at night. In the first post, I proved that this should be something easy to implement inside a BMW E36 car. In the second post, I presented a circuit diagram that will help you create the electronic circuit that is supposed to control your lights and turn them on automatically when it gets dark. In the third post, I wrote about my first attempt to implement this circuit and told you that it’s partially working but it needed some enhancements. In the fourth post, I created a video with the circuit implemented on breadboard and connected directly to my brother’s car lights. The video showed how the car lights turned on when I covered the light sensor with my hand (tricking the sensor to "think" it’s dark). So, the circuit is working correctly as intended.

In this new post, I soldered the circuit on permanent board and the end result looks like this:

I made sure that this circuit has the following:

1. Two wires for power (positive and negative).
2. Two long wires that are connected to the external light sensor. I made them long because I’m still not sure where I’m going to place that sensor. Take a look at this:

3. Three wires connected to an external variable resistor, this will allow us to adjust how sensitive the unit will be for light. Take a look at this:

4. Three wires that will deliver current from the battery directly to the headlights when it becomes dark.

With this circuit implemented, I think I’m ready to integrate this into my car. I hope in the next week, I will post a video here while I’m driving my car under a tunnel and show you how everything will work. :-). But please let me know what do you think of all this? Also, if you have any ideas about where I should put the light sensor, please let me know.

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.

I wrote three articles until now about how you can make your BMW lights turn on automatically at night. In the first post, I proved that this should be something easy to implement inside a BMW E36 car. In the second post, I presented a circuit diagram that will help you create the electronic circuit that is supposed to control your lights and to turn them on automatically at night. In the third post, I wrote about my first attempt to implement this circuit and told you that it’s partially working but it needed some enhancements.

Today, I had the time to re-implement the circuit that I’ve been talking about and I connected it to the car. Then, I shot this video for the circuit in action. In the video, I tried to put my hands closer to the light sensor to make it "think" it’s night. Take a look at the video and let me know what you all think.

Note: this car is not mine, it’s my brother’s car and it’s dirty as usual .

Enjoy :-

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As I promised in my previous post, Top Gear BMW M5 Review, I prepared a DIY (Do It Yourself) to show you how to fix your BMW E36 light switch illumination. This is a very very common problem in BMW E36 cars and it always goes unnoticed. Having illumination in the BMW E36 light switch looks great and if you can’t see that illumination in your dashboard, this means that this DIY is for YOU. I hope you enjoy it and find the information provided below useful.

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

The illumination of your light switch can be fixed easily and it costs nothing. Well, only a dollar to buy the correct light bulb to use for replacement. To start, take a look at this:

Now, at the bottom of this is a screw that you will need to remove. After that, you can remove the light switch and the air vent easily. Take a look at the screw here:

After you remove that screw, you will need to use a flat screw driver to push the whole light switch + air vent out. Be careful with this to avoid breaking anything. The whole part should be removed by pulling a little bit. You can pull it by hand by grabbing the light switch and the air vent opening. Just apply a little effort and it should come lose. After you remove the switch and the air vent, you will not be able to remove it totally out of its place. That’s because it’s connected by two wires that will need to be disconnected first. Take a look at the connectors that need to be removed:

To remove the light connecter you should turn it anti-clockwise (from your point of view). Be careful with this, the wires are very short and you will need to use your fingers to turn the connector. It’s a little bit tight place to work with. After you finish it, you will have the whole part (light switch + air vent) out like this:

This is where you will find the pin that is holding the light bulb that needs to be replaced. Take a look:

You will need to use a flat screw driver to remove the pin out of its place. Pay attention not to break anything ok? After you remove the pin, it should look something like this:

This is the light bulb that needs to be replaced. I brought another type of bulb by mistake thinking that these small bulbs are all of standard size. It turned out that I was wrong, so I had to go and get a different one. Take a look:

After you replace the bulb, put everything back the way your removed them. It’s going to be a little bit hard to reconnect the wires to the light switch, but don’t worry, you will be able to do it with a little patience and concentration.

After you connect the wires, you should try to place the air vent + the light switch back and you will notice that it’s not fitting exactly. That’s because you will need to make sure the opening of the air vent will slide in its place correctly. Just keep moving it a little bit up and down while pushing it gently. It will slide in and everything should look good now. Now turn your lights on and see if it’s working. If you’ve successfully accomplished the task, your light switch should look like this at night

So, what do you think? Isn’t that a cool fix or what?

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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This is the third post in the series of how to create a control device to turn your BMW lights on automatically when it gets dark. In the first post Turning Your BMW Lights On Automatically At Night, we’ve seen how it is possible to control a light using an electronic circuit that is sensitive to light. In the second post, Turning Your BMW Lights On Automatically At Night . . . Circuit Diagram, I presented an electronic diagram that can be used as the light controller inside the car. Of course, everything I said until that post was a theory that I’m almost sure that everyone of you thought it’s impossible or at least hard to implement. At least that explains why I didn’t get any comments on that article which I’m pretty sure it’s very interesting to everyone who drives a BMW E36.

Anyway, I decided to go one step further and try to implement my theory and my electronic circuit to see if it’s going to work or not. So, I brought everything that I mentioned in the second post + breadboard to help me implement the circuit and test it to see how efficient it is going to be. After I put the electronic circuit together, I discovered that the relay is not working . So, I had to pull one of the car relays to use it in my test. The circuit on the breadboard looked like this (very simply):

After that, I went to the car and connected the wires to my battery and started manipulating the variable resistor until I heard the relay ticking. When I heard the tick I moved the variable resistor back a little bit until I heard the relay tick again (this time it’s disconnecting). Now everything is set up correctly. I tried to cover the CDS (Cadmium Sulfide Cell) with my hand to make it "think" it’s dark and the relay ticked. Yay! it meant that the circuit is really working and all I had to do right now is to connect the car headlights to the relay and we’re done.

The circuit that I used is this:

When I tried to connect the headlights, I left the circuit on and after I connected the headlights to the relay, I tried again and opss. It’s not working anymore. Damn it!

It turned out that my circuit which was missing the 1KΩ resistor that is connected to the transistor base is not going to make the transistor last long. This problem is happening because the transistor base is not supposed to receive high current which I gladly sent to it. To solve this problem, I introduced the resistor to protect the transistor base and replaced the old transistor with a new one. Try again … it worked for a minute and then my radio stopped working

Its seems that my battery went dead because I left the lights on for some time. beginner’s mistake huh

So, I removed the circuit and tried to turn my car on but it didn’t, after that I had to abort the mission and solve the car’s problem before continuing the experiment. That’s what happened last night. I hope I will be able to give you an update on this as soon as I make this circuit perfect.

What I learned until now is that this circuit is going to work on my car, but I need more time to make it work perfectly. In case you didn’t notice, I introduced a capacitor to the circuit as well which is supposed to make the headlights work for a little bit longer when the CDS is exposed to light after dark. This is supposed to avoid light flickering inside your car.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post. Until my next adventure with this project, please stay tuned to get more updates on it.

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