Fan Speed Selector Illumination Gone

Yes, you can get to the bulb to replace it, but no, not without removing the center finish panel.

However, all might not be lost. In August, in Texas, you probably have about the best chances anybody could of manipulating the panel without damage. Over the years, the panel has lost the plasticizers that were originally mixed into it to lower its glass-transition temperature (Tg, the temperature above which it is resilient and plastic, and below which it is hard and brittle). They probably formulated it to have a Tg around normal driving temperatures originally, and now its Tg is higher than that (how much higher, I don't really know). So while at most normal temperatures it could be too brittle to pop out, with heat you can have a much better shot.

If anybody stands any chance of popping it out successfully, it's probably you if you leave the car in the Texas sun for a day, and get to work in the late afternoon with the plastic as warm as possible. Make sure to find and remove all the bolts and nuts (two near the ashtray and two behind the hazard switch), and look carefully at the pictures in the manual for exactly where the clips around the edge are located. Try to ease the clips out with finger force only, applied right where the clips are. Even the manual shows a taped screwdriver for prying but that should not be needed - I found that the style of clips involved did not require much force, and a moderate force would ease them out with a sort of satisfying shmoop. If it seems to be fighting you anywhere, slow down and find out why.

You might, of course, still fail, but we know what the panel costs to buy so you're betting $164 at the outside, and that's only if you lose.

-Chap

 

I was just reviewing this in the manual and I solved a mystery that's been bothering me a long time. I broke my center finish panel the first time I removed it, and I've always been pretty sure it's because I forgot to take out the two nuts behind the hazard switch. The mystery has been, why did I forget them, since I'm fairly good at following steps in a manual most of the time.

Looking back on that page now, I see the answer: the drawing shows both the two screws at the bottom and the two nuts behind the hazard switch. But the text only says to take out the two screws!

I don't feel so sheepish now.

Don't let it fool you: the two nuts need out, as well as the two screws, before you start trying to pop any of the six clips.

-Chap

 

Ah, this was it ... the thread back in August that gave me the idea to shoot a video of taking out the center finish panel, since so many posts were reporting breakage. So I went back and reviewed the instructions in the manual, figured out where I went wrong seven years ago, learned a little about glass-transition temperatures in plastics, and went out that weekend and shot the successful removal of the panel. (I also checked the back of the panel for the material stamp, which is PC+ABS, and when I looked up the Tg for that, it's so high that possibly none of what I said above regarding plasticizers and Tg was really on point ... from sitting in the August sun the panel was a toasty 55 celsius - but that's still well under the material's 125 C Tg according to what I looked up, and I was still able to remove the panel without a problem.)

Anyway, I had been putting off editing and finishing that video, but finally got to it:

(In case the video embed feature in the forum software gives trouble, here's a direct link.)

-Chap