Mazdabation

Well the question has come up several times on how to get your instument cluster out. I thought i would post this as there were just a a few things I noticed that were not mentioned from other members. Thanx to all who helped me through out the quest of this procedure.



#1: Remove three screws under steering colum shroud.

#2: Pull apart shroud by squeezing it at the seems. There are clips holding it together.

#3: twist out light bulb from ignition illumination section in steering shroud.

#4: At the side of dash is your vents(door open to see it). Remove triangle that shaped piece. It is held in by clips, gives a fight but comes. Start at the top and pry it out continuing downwards till it pops out. This will reveal a screw for step 5

#5: remove screws that hold the plastic vent cover under the dash/steering colum. there is also one to the side where that air vent is you just removed.

#6: Get under the dash and you will see one screw that holds the gauge plastics to the car. It is up at the front and on the left of the panel.

#7: All screws are out now, its just clips holding in the panel assembly. Now something I wasnt sure of was if the whole assembly came out or if it was supposed to split at the seem on the top of the dash. It ends up being the whole thing, right to the windshield.

#8: Pull on this with all of your lil wenie muscles. Its a fighter, i found it easyer to go from the right side of the dash and pull there. Pulling the whole thing straight back was to hard so i went a bit at a time from the side of where the lighter is. it will eventually pop out.

#9: Pull the assembly upwards to give yourself some space back there.

#10: remove cigarret lighter plug. there is a clip on it to squeeze to release it.

#11: there are 6 plugs in the back of the cluster. squeeze the clips on them and pull them out.

#12: pull the whole assembly out. I found the easyest way with out hitting anything was to go to the right. there is enough room that it wont hit a thing.

#13: your done......now wasnt that a pain in the ***



hopefully this step by step will help anyone in question

Shawn

Mazdabation

Wow Shawn. Thanks for the write up.....every lil bit of extra info helps.

Mazdabation

Hey no prob. What ever it takes to make the job easyer

ALNY93R1

I will be given it a try soon, thanks for the info.

rfreeman27

Thanks for the writeup.

Mazdabation

Just thought I'd throw another idea up if you may be doing this procedure. If you dont have a water temp gauge, and would like to keep the stock look for the interior, you may want to consider linearizing the stock temp gauge. The linearizing will give you the real readings that are reqiured for maintaining engine temperatures that after market gauges do.

Signal 2

Also for anyone doing this the 1st time...

When removing the three screws under the steering column shroud in "Step 1", one of the screws is a "machined thread" and the other two are just typical metal/interior screws. The machined screw is the one that would be the closest to you on the right side as your sitting in seat.



It's one of those things that can make go while trying to put it back together.

jspecracer7

good write up. This will go into the FAQ soon as the thread dies down...

amp

as far as step six...

there are two screws..



as far as step eleven..

only counted four connectors goin into the cluster itself... enclosed a pic

theres a possibility on a connector for the automatic clusters.. can anyone confirm this...

there are three others for the cluster panel.. headlamps.. cig lighter w/ bulb... cruise if you have..