Hi, Ken and Brad- Thanks much for all of your posts relating to the removal of your dashes. I'll be attempting the same work this month, and am glad to have found your informative descriptions. Best regards, Bret
Hi guys! Looks like time for me to replace the shrunk leather on my 1980 400i dash. so I've looked through the lovely pics in Brad's thread, beautiful work!. Mine's an early one, and Right Hand Drive as well, so there are quite a few differences. The leather has only shrunk significantly on the top of the instrument cluster, so I'll try to remove only this section on its own. I've done similar jobs on dashboards before, notably on my '64 MB 230SL , and that was not fun. My question is, have any of you got pictures of pre-1981 dash removal, and also, can the binnacle be removed on its own, without taking the rest out? Thanks for your help Eric
Guys, I know it is over 10 years ago since these posts were made; following up on the last post - is it possible to remove the 412 instrument binnacle only or must it all come out? Any tips greatly appreciated. Jason
You are talking about the Speedo and tach? If I recall you just loosen the black knurled nuts and it comes out. If you want to take the leather covered binnacle off, I don't remember for sure but I think you can unscrew and remove it once the tach and Speedo are out.
There is a frustrating rattle in the dash on my 400GT. It really ruins the experience for me. I believe it’s in the vicinity of the three outlets behind the dash. Is there a way to get back there without pulling the dash out? I swore THIS time I wasn’t going to start disassembling my car. And yet, there it sits. Dash and instruments lying all around.
Mine is a 400i, but here are a few things I can think about (although the air-conditioning is a bit different): 1) The flat portion of the dashboard is made of two parts. These two parts are bolted between the vents and the windscreen. The bolts and nuts can get loose easily. That's what I would try to secure first. These bolts are secured from the engine bay (under a rubber boot). 2) The air-conditioning unit is secured with a "bracket". This metal bracket is parallel to the instrument cluster panel (under the vents). The braket is secured by two horizontal threaded rods (and bolts) that are parallel to the transmission tunnel (i.e perpendicular to the bracket). That's basically what holds the whole unit. May be the bracket got loose and is knocking against the air-conditioning unit? The braked is normally isolated from the unit with some foam, but on my car, all was left was some dry powder. With a bit of luck you can access this bracket when the instrument cluster is removed. 3) If the air-conditioning is loose, it can also hit the metal duct that are under the vents (these are between the AC and the vents, and soldered on the frame). Same as above there is some kind of foam between the AC and the ducts, but on my car this was totally dry. My dashboard is fully disassembled, so will try to send you some pics of what it looks like, but for know this is all I can think about.
Wow thank you so much. I pulled the tach and can get in behind the metal plate behind the dash but I just don’t seem able to find it. If you do have pics that would be terrific. It’s driving me crazy.
Highlighted in blue : the two bolt and nuts (one clearly visible, the other is in the shadow) that can be secured from the engine bay. Highlighted in red : the bracket. On my picture you can see that the left rod is not secured (I am flushing the evaporator, so just put it all back so that you can get an idea). The other rod is on the right side behind the wiring harness. My guess, is that from the instrument cluster (the one with the clock), you can check if the bracket is tight. Highlighted in green : the junction between the AC and the "duct". Nomally there is some foam in between. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Raemin What year is your 400i? I had '84 my dash off for recovering a few years ago and a lot of things look different. Is the metal vent in pic for the defrosters? I had two plastic units with hoses on each side from the heater / fresh air vents. I don't remember accessing any bolts in the engine bay; the narrow piece closes to the windscreen were held with nuts and captive (welded?) bolts. I followed the the multi-picture post from this forum locating each and every bolt and it was all correct for me. I hope thomharrow finds his rattle, it sounds like same one I have. Ken
That's a generation 1 (1982), so the air-conditioning is closer to the 400GT than the 400 gen2 (which is so to say a 412 as far as the dashboard is concerned). Did not have the opportunity to disassemble my brother's 400GT, but my second brother has a 365, and the airconditioning is similar to mine, except maybe for the missing third fan, the round vents have another shape (same as the vent that is located on my passenger door pillar) smaller condenser, and flare connectors everywhere while I do have a mix of flare / O-ring on mine. All in all these differences are not substantial on the 365, So chances are that the 400GT is "pretty similar" to my 400i . The duct are for cold air: these are feeding three round vents in the middle of the dashboard, while on the gen2, the airflow is routed on the side of the dashboard. The defroster do have alternate duct (blade shape) much closer to the windscreen. I do have captive nuts on the side of the dashboard. On the middle of the dashboard, both bolts are exiting on the engine bay, but as I am now looking at the picture, the big hole sounds like maybe there used to be a captive nut here also... (By the way you can see in the background the vents for the defroster). Image Unavailable, Please Login Will make a detailed set of pictures when I have the opportunity to put all the bits and odds back.
Sorry for delay in responding. Raemin thank you. I got a lot of dash off last Sunday. I found the situation you show in green. Was running out of time but jammed cardboard between the two pieces comprising the air box. Fixed 80% of the noise. Will get the last 20% tomorrow. Plan on using rubber gasket material to keep the pieces apart. SouthJersey400i I’ll post results by Sunday night and let you know how it goes.
SouthJersey400i I’d say I’m as done on this as I’m gonna be. Looking at the diagram above with red, green and blue circles, the worst sound comes from the green circle. The edges of the duct and ac rattle and produce a sound that is echoed inside the duct. Gives the rattle a tinny sound, at least on mine. I glued rubber gasket material between the pieces. That helped a lot but not enough. The area in blue is for hardware holding down the dash and the dash trim that abuts the windshield. After a lot of struggling I found the whole in the firewall that gives some access to these. Put access in quotes. You gotta have a baby’s fingers to get in there. I found it by threading a long thin screwdriver from the dash side and out into the motor compartment. Then I threaded a long screw through the same passage, flat washer on the part in the car- lock washer, flat washer, and bolt on the engine side. Tighten (pretty hard on the body, also burned my hand) and you’ve now tightened down the part of the dash trimming the windshield. I knew there were 7 other nuts holding the dash down, so I took a shortcut and glued a gasket on the piece of medal in blue, to which the dash is supposed to be attached, knowing there was no way I was gonna thread another bolt through there. With the gasket hopefully there will be no rattle against the hold down clamp on the underside of the dash. Tightened it all up and now pretty much all the rattle’s gone. I hear rattles on rough roads but not so annoying, it takes a pretty rough surface to make any rattles, and then they’re general 40 year old car rattles I can live with. Hands still killing me
My bet is on the green or the red circles in my case. It is not worth pulling the dash off to 'kill the rattle'. I have to crawl under dash to check my AC and will have a look around to see what is reachable. Now I have something to look for. Thanks. Ken
Please note that the air-conditioning unit is secured only by the bracket, so it can "tilt" (on the same axis as the 4 wheels). With the bracket loose I could rotate the whole unit quite a bit and perfectly align, the unit against the duct. I suspect that the reverse could be true (if the bracket is slightly loose the unit may tilt to the point it touches the duct). By the way, in the previously posted photo the AC is "badly" tilted, I managed since then to rotate it by more or less 1-2cm, which was easy (no dashboard). If removing the dashobard is not an option, with a bit of persuasion maybe that removing the instrument cluster and wood console leaves sufficient room so as to "massage" the whole unit and align it properly. Removing the right trim of the transmission tunnels (which also requires to remove the glovebox), would make it a bit easier. Also on my car, some sort of soft glue (asphalt?) was applied under the AC so as to secure it somehow. Last but not least you can see in the picture that the lower part of the duct was purposely bent (some markings on the paint) away from the AC unit.
So of course the last 20% of rattle I could tolerate has now become the 100% I can’t tolerate. I have to get the a/c fixed and I don’t have the heart to take the dash off again. So I’ll let the pro who fixes the a/c take a shot.
You mean the one in front of the dash vent? If so, from the engine bay, above the wiper mechanism, you will find a rubber boot (the size of a big coin), remove it and then you get access to the bolt.
Hello, old thread, did anyone save the pictures from the 412 dash removal, the link is dead and the OP has not been active since 2016. Sent from my MAR-LX1M using Tapatalk