Good luck to you both!

Make SURE you ohm between a positive and negative lead to make sure there is no short between them!!!!! It's imperative you do that BEFORE you power it up!!!!

You've been warned!!!!

Tim

 

If you had a nickle for every time you said that...

Toque

 

My LEDs got here last night so this friday begins the adventure. All I have left is the HVAC and the rear cargo lights to change out and then the interior will be set in CIC Battle stations red! Has anyone changed out the gage light to a different color? I have not seen anything on this subject, seems logical to color cordinate those also! But I do like the color they came with, just wondering. Also good points about ohming out the ckts for shorts. I just have a feeling the dimmer ckt did something to knock out all my bulbs, unless these are in series and one knocks a row out!
One more poll for you guys out there, first off all my lighting behind the switches will be red, the temp ***** will be red/blue combo. Now for the small power on indicators behind each switch, wondering if blue would look good or should I stick with red?

 

the gauges are front-lit with blacklights.

 

Ahmen brother Mark!!!

 

Well, today I soldered all the LEDs in and powerd up! The switches seemed to not really work well, so I took it apart and played with the resistor placement. Bad mistake! One of the LED bases got shorted out and when I powered it back up I got the dredded puff of smoke. Has anyone yet figured out the component that is blowing in the circuit when this happens? The unit is still functional as all works and the LEDs for the "on" function in the buttons work, the remaining LEDS are all out. Man am I bummed! I am not really too upset as there was already some damage to the faceplate (and I really honkered it up by inadverntly getting the heat gun to close to a **** which has a nice big burn). So time to get another unit from fleebay. Too bad cause the soldering job was excelent, my carelessness and poor sight got the best of me.
If anybody has a solution to the circuit let be know!
In the mean time I think I will get a 9 volt bat and begin experimenting with the LED circuit to see if there is a better way to do this job and maybe find the solution which may be an alternative to "it the board your toast". I like the idea of putting one resistor in the ckt to cover the voltage drop for the LEDS, this would eliminate a lot of makeshift resistor placement and fiddling around with their interference to the switches.

 

I haven't found what fries yet and I've even replaced a number of components with known good ones from a good board. I wish I could find it, I have like 15 boards here from other DIY attempts that went awry also. Sometimes just the track coming off the main wiring interface burns up and you can replace it with some wire... Have you looked at your power board yet?

Where's my nickle??????????????

Tim

 

Here you go....
Don't spend it all in one place...

 

I needed that, depressing not getting my light mod. I am a little ahead, the push on indicators come on, everything works cept the LEDS for the switches and after yanking out a few that were dimly lit all the time I am ahead, (now have nice red LEDs on the buttons when pushed). Anyway I should be getting my new unit this week. Any of you "experts" want to mod mine with red LEDS all around except for the cool blue areas for temp (don't feel like playing any more)? PM me!

 

That's not even a real wooden nickel for hell's sake!!!!!

Tim

 

Got my HVAC wired with blue buttons and red for the heat side of the temp dial. Looks great!! Only issue was of the 4 red LEDs I got (some were spares just in case!) two didn't work right off the bat and one blew a few minutes after install. So I'm lefty with one red temp sweet, one not lit. I'll just buy more when I do the door controls, HUD controls, etc. Thanks to all for posting on here, I might have screwed this whole project up without you!

 

That's a HORRIBLE failure rate! I get maybe 2 to 3 bad ones out of a hundred! Are you sure you had the LEDs on the positive legs?

I'd get with the seller and ger some free new ones!

Tim

 

Thats what I thought! Yeah I had them wired properly. I did notice that they seemed to be engineered differently. Typically the anode is the smaller side of the diode inside the housing correct? I noticed the longer led (meant to be the positive side) was connected to the larger(cathode) side. i checked the LEDs against a 9v and the longer leg was still the positive so I went with that side. The one that did light up once installed lit for maybe 5 seconds before going out inside the HVAC. I didn't have any issues with the blue lights.

 

Yeah I think it is for Red, I never paid much attention but I think Blue and Red are opposite in that regard (anode/cathode size inside the LED).

The one that "cooked off" is what typically happens to a bad LED, I keep customer's components fired up on the power supply 4 to 5 hours to make sure there are no bad LEDs before sending them out...

Anyway, post some pics when you get it all done!

Tim

 

Beautiful!!! By why don't you have to use resistors??
I replaced all of my others in the climate control with blues except where the red temperature on the dial sits..I used red there. I would love to change the little amber indicator lights to nice colors. Are they 3mm?? Again, why do you not need resistors? that would be awesome.
I had to bend and prod like crazy to get the others WITH the resistors to sit right.
Please advise!!

 

Discreet LED's??? What is a Discreet 3mm LED??
Are they different then others??

 

Where the orange indicator lights are for the buttons, these are already LED's. So, you just replace with the color LED you want.

What is was meant by discrete LED's is to use an LED without a resistor.

Gary

 

Gotcha!!! This is awesome. I didn't even think to replace those.
I guess a 3mm should do well. I think the 5mm would be a little large.
I replaced all the lights with blue 5mm and one 10 mm (fan control) and a couple of 5mm reds where the red temperature part of both dials when I replaced the solder on the 241 display chips. I also added a 10 mm blue to the back of the traction control button. it came out wonderful.

 

Good work. I have used all 3mm LED for all of the installs I have done.

Now we need pictures of the finished project.

Gary

 

Hello, everyone. I replaced all my bulbs in my dual zone HVAC with leds and resistors, but after 1 or two weeks they start to flicker and eventually they die. I've replaced the led's twice already and they just flicker and die. Anyone else has had this issue?