Thank you all for your informative and candid responses. But the reality breaks my heart as I tried my very, and very best keeping it in shape and giving it numerous subtle but expansive upgrades. Little things like this starting to hurt. Just imagine the average retail price on the E21 is around 1,000 or less, and I have to put up may be 300 to repair or replace the stupid knob as I still need it for the cold climate. May be I should get rid of it? Gee, that baby is only got 90,000 original miles on it.