Installed the eco gauge today, and it was such a royal PITA... I believe it should have been as easy as connecting a vacuum line from the manifold, but when I installed and put in the new gauge cluster, the warning lights went crazy! My high beam light was constantly on, and then when I put the left turn signal on, my fuel and temp gauge would pulse to the turn signal and if I turned on the headlights only the left signal light would illuminate and no console, A/C or dash lights would come on.

I took it all apart again and came to the conclusion that it had to be the cluster malfunctioning, so I took off all the pins and needles from the new and old ones and swapped the faceplate and eco gauge to my old one, put it all back together and it did the exact same thing, mind you it's about 38oF and dark and I'm working with a small LED flashlight. At this point I'm kinda of getting worried, because if it's not a faulty cluster, it's something electrical that either shorted or went out AKA something I can't fix. So I start messing around with the wires and finally find that the circular 12 pin? connector is the culprit, something in it is not touching as it should messing up everything, all I could do was fiddle with it until it magically started working again.

I was happy because now I was finally done, so I hook everything up (about the fourth time) and realize that the speedo cable is all of a sudden not reaching or anywhere close. This really puzzled me because last time I had the cluster out I didn't have this issue. I pulled and pulled on the cable trying to get some more slack but it gave me nothing, and I tried as best I could to connect it with what I had, but it would just not reach, so I figured it's got to be caught on something inside the knee bolster area, so I take all of that apart and try to find the problem, nothing looks like it's restraining it. I figure maybe it's something under the car that it's stuck on, so I lift the car up and go under and find that, our previous mechanic had zip tied it so it would not hang and he did it in a manner where it would not move. I cut the zip ties and I got all the slack I wanted.

Finally finished!!!! Well, sort of. Because I took the needles off the clusters, I did not put them back on correctly so the oil reads way to high and the temp doesn't go above 80. So I have to go to the junkyard once again tomorrow to get another cluster and swap it one last time and I can finally finish this project. It's nice to see the eco gauge, but damn that sucked REALLY bad.

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2007 BMW 328XI