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 ***** do have to come off. When I figured that out, it wasn't too difficult as DIY jobs go.

 

Thanks for finding that, RidgeRunner. Now I've got something to do in
my spare(!) time. Any idea how long it took you?

 

The link is dead. For me at least.

 

copy and paste the complete link.

Nice find Ridge !

 

The first time (with the wrong bulbs), probably 2.5 hours as I was concerned about breaking plastic parts as I pried them apart, and didn't really know what I was doing or what to expect. Turns out the plastic is pretty stout stuff. Second time (with the right bulbs), more like an hour since I now had the process figured out.

The link got shortened when I posted. Bigshot has it right, copy and paste the whole link.

 

Here's the link to the post on Mini2.com again. I'm hoping it won't get shortened again when I post.
http://www.mini2.com/forum/faults-fi...rol-panel.html

 

How do I stop it from doing that?

 

I found the bulb part #62 11 1 368 299 available at the local BMW/MINI dealer. That part number is a BMW part number.