SI board batteries.

[D. Clay]

I have Sanyo CR14250SE NiCads in my SI board now. They're OEM. I'm fixing the odometer and and while I'm in there want go ahead and do new dash lights and SI board batteries. The Sanyo's are 3.6 Volt/850 MaH. I wanted to use two AA holders and put the batteries where they are easy to get too. Other forums say to use Radio Shack 1.2 Volt AA Lithium batteries.
Has anyone here replaced their batteries and if so what did you use?

[Wise Old Dog]

This is what I used, e-bay item:  cr14250se
Works fine.

[318idol]

You could also upgrade to the battery-less SI board and never think about batterie again.

[D. Clay]

I didn't know there was such a thing. What's the deal with those, where to get one, how much, etc?

[Wise Old Dog]

I was also looking at the battery-less boards, but all that I could find were for the early model e30's. Make sure the board is for your year e30.

[gearheadE30]

Also, there were 2 companies that made boards-VDO and motometer iirc. If you look at the lower center of the board, the name should be printed there.

[Febi Guibo]

I checked out the batteryless SI boards they have on ebay, and unfortunately, they can't do one for our particular vintage of BMW... that's what they said anyway...

[318idol]

I just had a local independent shop remove and replace my speedo and while they had the cluster out I had them install a .  Everything works awesome.  It was like $175, not cheap, but no worries and I already had the thing apart.  I don't want to futz with the cluster EVER AGAIN!

I'll ask them who the vendor is.

[johna]

If you have NiCad batteries you can't replace them with Lithium batteries as NiCads are rechargable and Lithium aren't usually (or do you mean Lithium Ion).

If you put non-rechargable lithiums in place of the NiCads the system will recharge them and as they are not designed to be recharged they may get damaged/explode/who knows...