Okay, so I got very rapidly fed up with having just slow or blow your head off fan speeds... so I decided to fix it and take photos along the way.

Apologies for the crappy phone camera!

This fix is for the rotory 1-2-3-4 type controls, not the climate control.

Furthermore it's a fix for the 1-2-3-4 becoming 1-1-1-4, not 4-4-4-4 if that makes sense! The latter of these two may be fixed by dropping a new resistor pack in at a cost of £19+tax from the dealer (See the rather excellent bmwe34 website.)

The core of the problem is the actual motor switch (props to Morgenster for pointing me in the right direction!) most people tend to leave their car on setting 2 or 3 permenantly, resulting in these burning out the quickest.

What you will need:
Full set of normal screwdrivers.
Small jewellers screwdriver.
Pair of good strength needle nose pliers.
Emery board/nail file if you've got one (Disclaimer: nick the wifes at your own peril!)

So, we begin:
You're going to need to pop out your heater control panel, to do this pop off the left hand sides screw cover plate and insert a small flat bladed screwdriver into the arrowed hole, push inwards firmly and the unit should kinda go *snap* and pop out a few milimeters. You can now use the same small screwdriver to carefully lever the unit out.


You'll have to learn how to wrestle all the connectors etc out the back - it's almost impossible to explain and

I'm too damn lazy. Just dont overstress anything or you'll be in trouble.


Once you've got the panel free, turn it around and get hold of a small long reach phillips screwdriver and remove the three screws which go into the holes arrowed here:

You'll have to carefully prise the potentiometer off the back of the switch as well... use a little flat bladed screwdriver to do it and it comes off quite easy.
Again apologies, most of these photos were taken as an afterthought after I figured out what I was doing.

...post to be continued...