Want to get the blues? and purples? and reds?

[Malibu Rapper]

And the dogs? And the bees? And the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you?

It looked pretty easy when I took apart the climate control to replace the LEDs. I originally thought I was going to go with all blue but I think that would have been a bit boring. The LEDS you can replace are the recirculate, fresh air, and defroster. So I decided to go with ultra violet for the recirculate, blue for fresh air, and red for the defroster. The original LEDs were green and amber *puke*. I ordered several LEDs from www.superbrightleds.com all in the 30 degree variety. The less viewing angle, the brighter they are. I didn't want to have variation on viewing angle just in case they didn't shine through correctly if I got the narrow LEDs so I stuck with the brightest common viewing angle.

Anyhow, I opened up the climate control and noticed that the LEDs that were in there were not the typical LEDs. They were flat on the top and bottom so I had to grind down my LEDs. The reason they are flat is because that will allow them to slide into the climate control buttons to light the buttons up. A regular LED will not fit. It took a few minutes each with the Dremel tool to get them the right shape. That left dull flat sides which I decided to polish out with the polishing bit on my Dremel and some Meguiars #9 swirl remover.

That done, it was just a matter of cutting the LEDs to the right length. Then you unsolder the original LEDs and solder the new ones in (make sure you get the + and - right because it matters).

I thought I would like the blue color best but this UV LED is so cool I may just keep my air on recirculate forever. I don't think the pics will do them justice. The larger pictures can be found at this gallery here.

Without further ado, the pictures:

All the LEDs soldered in

UV by itself

Blue by itself

Red and blue

Red and UV

 

[Vega$ NSX]

This thread gets an A+ alone for the awesome Simpsons reference! :biggrin:

Oh and the mod, DIY and write up is pretty awsome as well! :biggrin: Looks great! Just one question, what did you every do with your time before they invented LEDs?? :tongue: :biggrin:

 

[Malibu Rapper]

This thread gets an A+ alone for the awesome Simpsons reference! :biggrin:

Oh and the mod, DIY and write up is pretty awsome as well! :biggrin: Looks great! Just one question, what did you every do with your time before they invented LEDs?? :tongue: :biggrin:

I didn't think anyone would catch the Homer quote. I still remember the day I heard him say that, it was one of those times you were glad you weren't drinking milk. And what I used to do before LEDs was experiment with different types of filaments and inert gases. Before that, I used to be up in your neck of the woods when you were in diapers working with my buddy Moe Green and running the casinos till he got shot in the eye.

 

[D'Ecosse]

Nice job man
I thought about it too (damn, we're so alike .....) but the hassle with the "special" leds was too much to bother with for me.

 

[WillErickson]

That is simply too cool Malibu, I wish I had the patience/expertise to do something like that.

Will

 

[Cairo94507]

Man I gotta tell you that color looks great. Good job - I am willing to bet that Ken will be doing his.....

 

[SCS2k]

I didn't think anyone would catch the Homer quote. I still remember the day I heard him say that, it was one of those times you were glad you weren't drinking milk. And what I used to do before LEDs was experiment with different types of filaments and inert gases. Before that, I used to be up in your neck of the woods when you were in diapers working with my buddy Moe Green and running the casinos till he got shot in the eye.

Wow, the Simpsons and the Godfather in the same thread. I may have to sick my robotic Richard Simmons on you.

 

[Malibu Rapper]

Wow, the Simpsons and the Godfather in the same thread. I may have to sick my robotic Richard Simmons on you.

His ass is gonna blow! :biggrin:

 

[TucAZNSX]

Wow, I wish I had the ability to do this. :frown: That looks awesome! I really like the UV.

 

[01blacks4]

piece of cake heather...when ever you are ready, just let me know

 

[D'Ecosse]

Wow, I wish I had the ability to do this. :frown: That looks awesome! I really like the UV.

step by step instructions for the primary part - the leds is an added bonus but you will get the main effect from just changing the filter.

 

[Texas91Brent]

Cool idea, but what about all the other red lights? Doors ,dash,etc..??

 

[Malibu Rapper]

Saying goodbye to Amber

I finally had time to replace the bulbs that were bothering me. This is just one of those things you might try if you run out of things to do or want to completely dump old Amber. The ignition switch is tied in with the timed courtesy lights and it's an amber bulb. The ashtray also has a bulb that lights up a yellowish orange color. I took them out the other day and found the Superbrightleds.com replacement bulb which is the #74 and purchased it in blue. The end result looks something like this:

If you look closely, you can kind of see the climate control lighting up a little blue. I did replace those bulbs as well. But there were no replacement bulbs for that type. So what I had to do was remove the incandescent and replace it with a 3mm LED and resistor. eBay has these LEDs super cheap as I think they are Hong Kong rejects but they work great. $11 shipped for 100 with resistors included. The end result was not that satisfying. If I remove the knobs, you can see the LEDs light up great! But the knobs are not as translucent or dissipate light as well as they should.

Here's how they look when the knobs are off.



Here's the OEM climate control bulbs. You have to unravel them and pull the bulb out.



Insert 3mm LED, wrap it and solder in a resistor to the positive lead on the LED.



Insert sockets back onto climate control board. If you get the orientation wrong, they will not light up. Simply turn the bulb 180 degrees and you will be fine. But if you look closely at this picture, you will get the orientation right the 1st time.



The climate control board bulb change is a bit of a disappointment because it's not as visible as the other bulb changes. But if you have the time, you might as well. This technique worked great on replacing the dash bulbs in my Scion.

Tons of pix in my gallery.

 

[D'Ecosse]

Nice job as always Bradley!

Is your instrument panel an aftermarket gauge kit?

I meant to order some additional leds from superleds for the gauges. Do you know if there is anything else to replace if you keep stock gauges, or just replace out the bulbs? (i.e. is there a filter gel in there somewhere?) I know there are two sizes of bulbs in the guage assembly.

 

[Malibu Rapper]

Is your instrument panel an aftermarket gauge kit?

I meant to order some additional leds from superleds for the gauges. Do you know if there is anything else to replace if you keep stock gauges, or just replace out the bulbs? (i.e. is there a filter gel in there somewhere?) I know there are two sizes of bulbs in the guage assembly.

That gauge kit is an optical illusion, kinda. It's one of those white face gauge kits and I used the controller to just light up the markings. But still the amber lights on the instrument cluster are there. I have to dim the interior lights all the way to make it light up without the amber light. Even still you can see it a little. I'm thinking of taking the kit out and re-doing the whole instrument cluster with LEDs and recoloring the needle but it's going to take a lot of experimentation time which I don't have right now. I'm a little worried that the LED coverage will be really spotty. This diagram shows a lot of bulbs and it just doesn't look like an LED would do well unless it had a super wide lens. I do believe there were amber lenses at the top of the cluster where the amber light shines down to light the needle. It's the picture at the top of the link where it shows the 2 1.4W bulbs, I think there are lenses underneath those.

It's a big job IMO and you're the man for the job Ken!

 

[D'Ecosse]

... This diagram shows a lot of bulbs and it just doesn't look like an LED would do well unless it had a super wide lens. I do believe there were amber lenses at the top of the cluster where the amber light shines down to light the needle. It's the picture at the top of the link where it shows the 2 1.4W bulbs, I think there are lenses underneath those.!

You don't need to change all those out Bradley - all the warning / indicator lights which shine through red, amber or green filters for the various alarms/warnings should be fine as you will need that indicator colour anyway - I think the main ones to change would be the backlight ones for the gauges. (3 x 3W; two x 1.4W and possibly the other two you mention) per those circled below. I can't think what those two in the top diagram are for - I'm drawing a blank on those???

I agree with the potential problem of the angle - it depends on how much dispersion you get from scattered light off reflections but especially for the small gauges you are looking at the single bulb effectively between the two gauges, so it Will be unlikely to be uniform across the gauge.

Only one way to find out!

 

[Malibu Rapper]

I didn't mean to imply that you need to change all of them but I think you've got the ones highlighted that you do need to change. There are diffused LEDs that have wider angles but I don't know of an easily integrated bulb for this application. For the needle to light up I was thinking about using a luminescent paint I think it was called Luminite.

 

[NSXrebel]

So is there a removable film behind the gauges that's easily taken off, or is it the kind that's "painted on" ? if it's an easily removeable film, i'm thinking of custom wiring LEDs in there, enough leds to have sufficient light coming through.

 

[D'Ecosse]

... i'm thinking of custom wiring LEDs in there, enough leds to have sufficient light coming through.

I'm not beyond drilling some extra holes in the back panel to throw a few more in there <!--StartFragment -->

 

[NSXrebel]

I'm not beyond drilling some extra holes in the back panel to throw a few more in there <!--StartFragment -->

i'm willing to poke some more holes to accomodate more LEDs, but the question, is the film behind the gauges easy to remove?

 

[Malibu Rapper]

Amber still needs to leave, packing her boxes and leaving them at the curbside

Thanks to Garrick and his illuminating thread I was able to get the LED replacements to shine through a bit more. The previous picture shows that the blue LED bulbs didn't really shine through on the climate control. It's that darn paint that Honda put on there that doesn't allow the blue light wavelength to shine through.

So you start with a piece like this




Then I used acetone nail polish remover on a Q-tip because I'm too lazy to sand. It takes a lot of Q-tips...



It's hard not to mess up and go a little too far with rubbing the paint off. I actually rubbed part of the red off which made the lighting a bit inconsistent. So I figured I'd just go ahead and rub all of the red off along with the white fan symbol. I tried filling it all back in with White Out (the new one with the sponge brush) but the layer of white out never was even enough to not look spotty when backlit. I opted for clear which looked like this when backlit:



That fan symbol is now too bright. So I hunted around the garage for my white electrical tape and then just covered the fan logo and word AUTO. That seems to do the trick.



I removed some amber pieces from the knobs which didn't really do a whole lot. You can definitely notice in person that light shines through the knobs more than before but still not much.



The end result is much better than before.

 

[lithiumus]

Re: Amber still needs to leave, packing her boxes and leaving them at the curbside

Nice work! Looks awesome.

Now how do we get the LCD illumination within the temp control to have a deep blue rather than a greenish blue?