Questions and Answers

BMW L7 Dashboard And Air Doors Q. I own a 1986 BMW L7 (735). The problem is two fold. First, on the dash board there is a knob that control the A/C temperature. To the left is a knob that controls the fan speed. When I turn on the fan speed knob, air will blow into the passenger compartment and then it makes a noise similar to a door closing and the air will stop coming in. This will go off and on and with it goes the air circulation.

The dealer tells me that the entire dash board must be removed in order to diagnose the problem and at least four (4) hours are required to remove the dash board. Is this the only way to access and repair this problem?

The second problem is the dash board lights. The light is very dim even with the dimmer knob turned all the way to bright lighting. The fuse seems to be okay and so does the control knob; therefore, it appears that some of the bulb(s) are burned out. Again, is removing the dash board the only way to replace burned out bulbs?

If you can answer these questions and/or provide a solution other than removal of the dash board, I would be most appreciative. Of course, if removal is the only way, oh well!

Thank you for your time,
David

A. It sounds like one of the vent doors has come off it's linkage. If this is the case, then some disassembly will need to be done to get the HVAC box out to find out which door it is, what's broken and repaired.

The instrument cluster will need to come out to replace the bulbs, not the whole dashboard. But of course if they are going to pull the whole dash, by rights the only extra expense in replace the instrument cluster bulbs would be the cost of the bulbs themselves.