My '04 MCS lost the lighting behind the right side of the manual heater A/C control panel. The dealer and the popular wisdom both seemed to say that the only answer was to replace the control unit. Since I hate throwing money at a repair needlessly and felt it was probably no more than a blown bulb, I started digging into it. I found a forum post on another Mini website; someone had opened up the control unit and had found the bulbs to be replaceable. That post is found at:
http://www.mini2.com/forum/faults-fi...ce-blown-bulb-
heater-control-panel.html.
The post appears to have been made from England; the description of the bulbs needed didn't correlate with anything I could find here. After a few bulb purchases that looked right but weren't, I did find the right bulb at PartsQuick.com. The part is made by Flosser and carries their part #62 11 1 368 299. The PartsQuick stock number for the bulb is 419101.
The secret to getting at the bulbs that I missed the first time through was that the control knobs do have to come off. When I figured that out, it wasn't too difficult as DIY jobs go.