'06 M3 vs. the '07 question?
 

I was looking at the interior pics from the new '07 3i and I really took a liking to the silver looking cluster gauges over the black ones on my '06. SO, I called the dealer for a price check on just that part from the '07 and they are about $450 but, my ? is will they fit and operate properly? my concern is not really the cosmetic fit cause they are pretty much the same but what I am concered about is if the electrical jack on the '07 is the same as the '06 models? if anyone can answer this for me I would be very gracious. and the reason I didn't ask the dealership this question is because all they do atleast at mine is run your VIN# and give the part for that vin#, they won't actually give you information on whether or not it would fit. whether or not its true they told me it had to do with some kinda of warranty policy and voiding it if the wrong parts are put on the wrong car. anyway, help if you can! xTHANKSx

everything should be a direct swap. The only rub is that a dealer may actually have to do all the work for you because there may be issues with the CAN system and the new cluster.

if it were me I'd just yank them out and paint them silver

call me stupid but, what is a CAN system?

in laymamns terms its a way of saying everything is linked together and specific for that one car. I don't understand it fully myself but it makes swapping of parts very difficult.

CAN is a bus protocol, kind of like the language that all the electronic parts of the car use to talk to each other.

Even if the gauge clusters are physically the same you're still going to have to get a dealer to reprogram the new cluster to work with your car, though. The Mazda3 gauge cluster stores information in it that has to match up with the electronics in the rest of the car, otherwise it doesn't work.

It seems like this is less of a compatibility thing than an intentional sanity check so someone can't buy a new gauge cluster, swap it in, and have 0 miles on the odometer and claim the car was never driven.

Andrew Beard