To bulb or not to bulb?

cxprestigeauto · Post by **cxprestigeauto** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:01 pm

Well after several months of tweaking the 4X4 is now running rather well! Starting is still a bit fraught but she always catches first time, you just have to be a bit quick to press the pedal and keep her going. Judging by other posts this seems to be a common problem with carb feed cars.

Anyway back to the issue in hand. With the nights drawing in there is a notable shortage of illumination on the RH side of the dash and the heater controls. Fortunately the bulbs lighting the speedo and guages are OK.

I have not taken a late BX instrument pod apart before but a learned colleague has done so several times and his view is that the only thing guaranteed is that half the locating tabs will break!

Is this true or is he just rather heavy handed. Also how easy is it to access the bulbs behind the heater controls. By some miracle all the controls work perfectly and I am loathe to disrupt them and precipitate further problems.

All thoughts gratefully received.

Rob

MULLEY · Post by **MULLEY** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:14 pm

Heavy handed i believe, there are some screws somewhere which if not spotted means that the tabs get broken. When Ken kindly took my TZD one apart, guess what, someone had already been in & bust them......

Post by **mat_fenwick** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:54 pm

Here is a thread which details how to replace heater control bulbs.
To get the dash pod out you remove the trim strip between the pod and the steering column (2 screws underneath), remove the clock tray (2 screws at the front), and the panel by the driver's right knee which has the electric mirror switch in it (pops out forwards)
You then reach up behind each side of the dash pod and find a small nut near each top corner. I think on a 1990 they will be 11(?)mm nuts - the later models had wingnuts which made life easier, but I can't remember when they changed...
Then pull the pod forwards, removing connectors and speedo cable, and that should be it, unless I have forgotten something. It's been a while since I last did one!