Hello everyone,

I want to change my 2003 e46 320d 's Instrument Cluster illumination colour.
Before I do this on my car, I bought one from ebay and now trying to set it up for operation at home.

I found cluster's pinout from www.newtis.info and applied positive +14 volt to pins 4 - 5 - 6 of black socket called X11175 as shown on website.
https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/...es/a2-instrument-cluster-control-unit/Yu7pY0e

https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/...es/a2-instrument-cluster-control-unit/wkCR38t

https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/...e-lights/side-lights-rear-right-inner/XTMlhsE


Cluster came live, needles took position, LCD worked, lots of warning leds are on too.

As my understanding from www.newtis.info, pin 7 is for illumination.
Pin 7 signal called 58g and cable colour is Grey/Red
It is connected to the Light Control Module and I easily found on my car's LCM and checked its voltage for min and max readings.
It is 0 volt when lights are fully dimmed, and 14 volt for max.

So back to home, I applied 14 Volt to pin 7 but there is no any illumination at all. All LEDs are off.

And this is the reason I opened this thread.

Anybody knows how to light these illumination LEDs ? Apart of pin 7, all the other pins are quite clear what are they for. But I hope nothing related with Bus(es).

I followed the connection of pin 7 on PCB, but I couldn't find any connection to anywhere. Maybe these PCBs have another layer inside. So I have no idea where is this pin 7 connected.

Thank you.

 

I dont have my diagrams nearby right now but I am assuming you have this cluster apart. Check the voltage at the illumination lamos and see what you have for voltage. I will tell you more in a bit.

EDIT: Okay after looking at this, you should be able to apply 12.6-14VDC to pin 7 and all of the illumination lights should come on. Back to what I said earlier. Check the actual voltage at the lights when you are applying this voltage to pin 7 and see what you have. Make sure pin 1 has a good ground.

 

Ok, here is the update.
I couldn't find more information about pins etc and I simply bypassed the transistor which drives background LEDs.
So all LEDs are lighting now, I already changed the orange colour LEDs to white ones. All good.
But thanks to lovely design of BMW to make everything in same colour, it is a bit difficult to make background and needle in different colour.
I was aiming white background and red needle.
I managed to make needle in red colour with red LEDs, but it is difficult to separate white and red.
So, what I found on ebay is a red colour paint for car instrument cluster needle.
Maybe I buy and test more, maybe I leave it here.