!!! PLEASE NOTE THAT IM REDOING THIS DIY DUE TO INCOMPLETE INFORMAION IN THIS FIRST POST, ALL NEEDED INFO IN THE REST OF THE THREAD !!!
(PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU NEED HELP)
lets start on the heater controls as they are tricky and hard to do right, being the first one to do something always takes guts, a lot of trail and error and debugging but in the end when it all work like you want it to it's a great feeling.
here is the heater control without the lower buttons, as you can see there is little "film" plates over the lenses you can leave them there if you are going to be using white or blue LED's but if you are going for the red like I did then you need to take them out.
there are 5 incandescent light bulbs that make the faces of the buttons light up but more on that later..
to take the button faces off you need to little dental picks one on each side of the button, you will see little idy bity clips holding the button faces to the white button plungers (the ones with the lenses to remove).
to take apart the heater controls is easy BUT DON'T FORCE IT. there are 4-6 philips head screws and a few snap, after removing all the screws with 2-3 little flat head screw drivers pry the clip and pop the back off the heater controls again DON'T FORCE IT take your time and see what needs to be lifted or pried to get it to pop open like a clam....
the innards PCB before mods
^please note the little white-ish squares inside of bigger black squares they are green LED's and they light up the little circular that indicates what function you just activated. leave them for now unless you want to change the color of that too ( I changed them to blue, the ones on the PCB are SMD LED's that stands for "Surface mounted diode" "Light Emitting Diode" and the ones I had on hand where 5mm regular LED's so I had to MOD the cr@p out of them to get them to work but I was lazy to order the right ones and I head a dead line coming up faster then I had time to tincker and order the right parts (links to get the parts will be found at the end of this DIY) there are resisters already on the PCB so all you need to do is take off the green LED's that are there now and solder on what ever color ones you want as long as they work at 3.3-4V)
switch before mods, the round gray thing you see in the center is the incandescent light bulb that you have to take out and replace will an LED, I used 4V LED and had to add a resister for them to work with the cars 12V system but unless you know what you are doing you should get 12V LED's they have a resister built in and dont need a resister to be added on.
this film needs to come off...
and so it dose...
here it is with blue LED's soldered in place... (again I used the wrong LED's for this application, I will have to change this later, unless you know what you are doing only replace the SMD LED's with SMD LED's)
here are some LED's with resisters soldered on and there heads cut off (the reason why I cut the heads off is because the "[)" shape of the head focuses the beam of light onto one point and you want to spread more so it looks like this before [ )>- .... after [ |# )
here it is all don't... ( the batteries died on my camera while I was doing this so I missed a few key steps but I will retake a few shots and update this DIY soon I promise)
for the hot/cold control knob I had some extra problems that I had to work around, the front face of the knob had the little red and blue bars that you select to right well there is no film in behind that I can take off and using only a red LED lights up the red bar only the red light doesn't filter through the blue side, if you use a blue LED it only lights up the blue side and not the red on the other hand using a white/clear LED will light up both the red and the blue but the selection positioned indicator will be white so what I did is soldered the (-) negative leads from 1 RED LED and 1 BLUE LED and soldered one each resister (why one each and not both together well the red LED like 3.3V and the blue likes 4V if both where on the same resister only one will light up) the I pointed the blue LED to the cold side and the RED LED to the hot side soldering the (-) the the (-) on the PBC and the 2 resisters to the (+) side (resister only go on the (+) side of the LED never the (-) side) and here is how that looks when done
Ok now onto changing steering wheel button lights to red LED's (easily done to blue just use a blue LED not a red one) the LED's in the buttons are surface mounted LED's meaning they are about 3mmx4mm top soldered to the board not like the regular LED's where they have 2leads that go through the board. since I don't have any surface mounted LED's all I have are regular 5mm (and 10mm) ones so what to do...?..... here let me show you.
first here is the whole where the assembly sits in the steering wheel
here are the buttons to take apart
here are the buttons all taken apart (2 snaps per side of button) be careful..
(there are 3 little screws holding down each board)
here is what you do with the LED's, you have to snip off the top of the LED to make it flap this way it will not be focused at one spot but rather spread the light all around,
I found that using the double bladed end of RJ45 or cat5 cable crimpers works best,
*WARNING*
the tops of these suckers top and fly off at great speeds so be careful and aim away from face, eye protection is mandatory.
..
see that gray rubber thingy you have to cut out the little squares with a sharp blade in order the pop the new LEDS through.
snip off both leads on the LED so they are about 7mm long the made a 110* bend (>) 1/3 the way down the lead away from center then lower from that bend bend it 10 in the the center this way the lead should look like this 7 and both leads should be two 7 (one backward to the other. then remove the surface mounted LEDS (de-solder or cut them off) and solder the new ones on
here it is with the cut rubber part on
and DONE
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
update
ok so I finely got around to doing to door panel switches in bart's car...
and here is what I did.
lets start with the door panel removal first.
(most of the pictures speak for themselves others I made to say what I want them to say)
pop off from clips (they hold on tight so tug on the panel hard AFTER REMOVING ALL SCREWS)
now remove these screws from the inner part of the panel and pop out the switch panel after disconnecting the harness (to remove the door handle pop out from door panel and twist 90* to the side then slide through the hole)
ok here is how the switch panel looks like
and now we take it apart
and stock parts replaced (the stock LED's on the board light up white when given 5Volts other wise the light is getting like 1V couseing it to glow gray and not light up super bright white like it's supposed to, the stock resister is a 12K ohm or 12000ohm so I replaces it will a 1000ohm but a 600ohm would have worked better for the LED's that I'm using up guys use what ever ones come with your LED order unless you know what you are doing) I used 5mm LEDS and had to shave them a little to make them fit right so get 3mm LED's for this one ....
once it's all put back together it should look something like this
and the rest of the dash (with out the carputer as it's is at home)
here is bart working hard to iron out the bugs out of the carputer (we are working on some cool mods for the carputer it self but I will not say what yet)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
please enjoy this one and I will update this DIY post later on today and over the weekend to include tools needed and where to get the right LED's
disclaimer:
I can not be held liable for anything that you do with your car using the information that I am providing for you, I have experience doing this kind of work and I understand the risks involved with modifying OEM hardware. Please understand that if not dont right there is a great chance that the heater control module may become fried but the replacement PCB is around 100$. that is all and happy moding..
PLEASE ASK ASK ASK BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS DIY IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING
in case any one wants to know how to take the hazard switch apart
enjoy
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
UPDATE
ok so this is the last part left in barts car that I needed to mod... well the thing is that I didn't even need to mod the radio as it is not used in barts car since hes got that nice carputer setup...
here goes, the write up on modding your stock radio from the pale crap light colour lights to red to blue or what ever you want it to be, (all the steps are the same weather it's Si or not and for all colours of LEDs)
lets start by looking at the back of the radio (once removed from the car)
these are the screws that you must remove to take apart the radio...
4 on one side
and 3 on the other side
once they are removed just grab it by the back and pull up while holding the plastic facing. (images are of radio upside down)
then it should look like this
to take this board off you need to remove these screws
there are two ribbon cables that need to be removed as well, to take them out all you need to do is unclip the lock by sliding it out then slide the cables out.
you will need to flip the whole thing over and take off the selector rings off, they are only snapped in so all you need to do is pray them up, it's best to do it from both sides and use flat long parts (I used two old knife blades as thats what I had at hand)
so here is what we want
you need to take off the old lights, the bulb is part of the brown base and the base is soldered to the board you either cut them off or de-solder them but either way be careful not to rip up the the little contact strips under them (I found that using a flat nose pliers, gab the light at the base and twist them right off)
here is a closer look
closer
closer still
I was going to go closer but I don't have a macro flash yet, I need to buy one
ok once you got them off find what side is (-) and that side is (+), honda made it easy
(mark what is what with a fresh sharpie so you don't forget of mess up)
the little lights in the knobs will be a pain in the buttocks but not impossible
here is a look inside without the old light
now prepare your LEDs to solder in
then solder it in (helps to keep it tilted to the side to give you room to work)
with the knobs done move onto the rest, everyone of the LEDs will need a resistor (one each)
here is what that shold look like when done
I tried to uses SMT resistor but they did not work as needed
he is the before (with SMT's)
and what I had to do after
now I could of done it like this
but I got lazy and the others I already had pre-made, the little sucks take a while to make look all nice like that.
this leaves two more to do next to the eject and disp buttons
they are easy and just poke through
once all that is soldered and good you will need to make some space for the new LEDS by taking these little guys out
from here
to take them out you need to take to buttons out to do the just push from the back and they should pop out but BE CAREFUL as there are two little plungers per button that will pop out at the same time so watch out for that (there are two one longer then the other)
once the clear things are out pop the buttons back and don't forget the little plungers.
here is a little look inside before the clear things are removed
(thank you Nokia N95 for having a nice macro flash so close to the lens)
ok so once you have everything all done just put it all back togather, there might be some fitment issues so you might need to tweek the positioning of the LEDs just a little for it to fit right.
and once it all gets put back together it will look like this
(please note that you need to enter the radio code before the lights work)
good luck, have fun, be calm, be happy.
after Nick (GETxERxDONE) gets his all done in blue I will post up his pics of what all this work looks like in blue
=================================
and now thanks to GETxERxDONE playing with his car you get to see what it looks like in blue yay
_-= LINKS =-_
here are some places to get the stuff you are going to need
trusted links
http://stores.ebay.ca/best-offer-for-you-2010
http://stores.ebay.ca/led-hk/3mm-5m...-5mm-Round-LED-Bulb-/_i.html?_fsub=9872881&_sid=482459762&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
new places
Shop eBay Canada Store - sunpec:: SMD 1206 5, SMD 0805 5
for resistors and other things
eBay Store - Sure Electronics: Components, LEDs, Tools
Shop eBay Canada Store - PARTSPIPE:: SWITCHES, LED's Downlight Bulbs Bezels
enjoy and happy modding
we will soon have a all white dash light set up and two that will be a little different, one will be all white untill the shift light turns on when then it will turn all read, the other will be all red till Vtec kicks in at which point it will all turn to blue....
so stay tuned for all kinds of neet things to come
(PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU NEED HELP)
lets start on the heater controls as they are tricky and hard to do right, being the first one to do something always takes guts, a lot of trail and error and debugging but in the end when it all work like you want it to it's a great feeling.
here is the heater control without the lower buttons, as you can see there is little "film" plates over the lenses you can leave them there if you are going to be using white or blue LED's but if you are going for the red like I did then you need to take them out.
there are 5 incandescent light bulbs that make the faces of the buttons light up but more on that later..
to take the button faces off you need to little dental picks one on each side of the button, you will see little idy bity clips holding the button faces to the white button plungers (the ones with the lenses to remove).
to take apart the heater controls is easy BUT DON'T FORCE IT. there are 4-6 philips head screws and a few snap, after removing all the screws with 2-3 little flat head screw drivers pry the clip and pop the back off the heater controls again DON'T FORCE IT take your time and see what needs to be lifted or pried to get it to pop open like a clam....
the innards PCB before mods
^please note the little white-ish squares inside of bigger black squares they are green LED's and they light up the little circular that indicates what function you just activated. leave them for now unless you want to change the color of that too ( I changed them to blue, the ones on the PCB are SMD LED's that stands for "Surface mounted diode" "Light Emitting Diode" and the ones I had on hand where 5mm regular LED's so I had to MOD the cr@p out of them to get them to work but I was lazy to order the right ones and I head a dead line coming up faster then I had time to tincker and order the right parts (links to get the parts will be found at the end of this DIY) there are resisters already on the PCB so all you need to do is take off the green LED's that are there now and solder on what ever color ones you want as long as they work at 3.3-4V)
switch before mods, the round gray thing you see in the center is the incandescent light bulb that you have to take out and replace will an LED, I used 4V LED and had to add a resister for them to work with the cars 12V system but unless you know what you are doing you should get 12V LED's they have a resister built in and dont need a resister to be added on.
this film needs to come off...
and so it dose...
here it is with blue LED's soldered in place... (again I used the wrong LED's for this application, I will have to change this later, unless you know what you are doing only replace the SMD LED's with SMD LED's)
here are some LED's with resisters soldered on and there heads cut off (the reason why I cut the heads off is because the "[)" shape of the head focuses the beam of light onto one point and you want to spread more so it looks like this before [ )>- .... after [ |# )
here it is all don't... ( the batteries died on my camera while I was doing this so I missed a few key steps but I will retake a few shots and update this DIY soon I promise)
for the hot/cold control knob I had some extra problems that I had to work around, the front face of the knob had the little red and blue bars that you select to right well there is no film in behind that I can take off and using only a red LED lights up the red bar only the red light doesn't filter through the blue side, if you use a blue LED it only lights up the blue side and not the red on the other hand using a white/clear LED will light up both the red and the blue but the selection positioned indicator will be white so what I did is soldered the (-) negative leads from 1 RED LED and 1 BLUE LED and soldered one each resister (why one each and not both together well the red LED like 3.3V and the blue likes 4V if both where on the same resister only one will light up) the I pointed the blue LED to the cold side and the RED LED to the hot side soldering the (-) the the (-) on the PBC and the 2 resisters to the (+) side (resister only go on the (+) side of the LED never the (-) side) and here is how that looks when done
Ok now onto changing steering wheel button lights to red LED's (easily done to blue just use a blue LED not a red one) the LED's in the buttons are surface mounted LED's meaning they are about 3mmx4mm top soldered to the board not like the regular LED's where they have 2leads that go through the board. since I don't have any surface mounted LED's all I have are regular 5mm (and 10mm) ones so what to do...?..... here let me show you.
first here is the whole where the assembly sits in the steering wheel
here are the buttons to take apart
here are the buttons all taken apart (2 snaps per side of button) be careful..
(there are 3 little screws holding down each board)
here is what you do with the LED's, you have to snip off the top of the LED to make it flap this way it will not be focused at one spot but rather spread the light all around,
I found that using the double bladed end of RJ45 or cat5 cable crimpers works best,
*WARNING*
the tops of these suckers top and fly off at great speeds so be careful and aim away from face, eye protection is mandatory.
..
see that gray rubber thingy you have to cut out the little squares with a sharp blade in order the pop the new LEDS through.
snip off both leads on the LED so they are about 7mm long the made a 110* bend (>) 1/3 the way down the lead away from center then lower from that bend bend it 10 in the the center this way the lead should look like this 7 and both leads should be two 7 (one backward to the other. then remove the surface mounted LEDS (de-solder or cut them off) and solder the new ones on
here it is with the cut rubber part on
and DONE
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
update
ok so I finely got around to doing to door panel switches in bart's car...
and here is what I did.
lets start with the door panel removal first.
(most of the pictures speak for themselves others I made to say what I want them to say)
pop off from clips (they hold on tight so tug on the panel hard AFTER REMOVING ALL SCREWS)
now remove these screws from the inner part of the panel and pop out the switch panel after disconnecting the harness (to remove the door handle pop out from door panel and twist 90* to the side then slide through the hole)
ok here is how the switch panel looks like
and now we take it apart
and stock parts replaced (the stock LED's on the board light up white when given 5Volts other wise the light is getting like 1V couseing it to glow gray and not light up super bright white like it's supposed to, the stock resister is a 12K ohm or 12000ohm so I replaces it will a 1000ohm but a 600ohm would have worked better for the LED's that I'm using up guys use what ever ones come with your LED order unless you know what you are doing) I used 5mm LEDS and had to shave them a little to make them fit right so get 3mm LED's for this one ....
once it's all put back together it should look something like this
and the rest of the dash (with out the carputer as it's is at home)
here is bart working hard to iron out the bugs out of the carputer (we are working on some cool mods for the carputer it self but I will not say what yet)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
please enjoy this one and I will update this DIY post later on today and over the weekend to include tools needed and where to get the right LED's
disclaimer:
I can not be held liable for anything that you do with your car using the information that I am providing for you, I have experience doing this kind of work and I understand the risks involved with modifying OEM hardware. Please understand that if not dont right there is a great chance that the heater control module may become fried but the replacement PCB is around 100$. that is all and happy moding..
PLEASE ASK ASK ASK BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS DIY IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING in case any one wants to know how to take the hazard switch apart
enjoy
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
UPDATE
ok so this is the last part left in barts car that I needed to mod... well the thing is that I didn't even need to mod the radio as it is not used in barts car since hes got that nice carputer setup...
here goes, the write up on modding your stock radio from the pale crap light colour lights to red to blue or what ever you want it to be, (all the steps are the same weather it's Si or not and for all colours of LEDs)
lets start by looking at the back of the radio (once removed from the car)
these are the screws that you must remove to take apart the radio...
4 on one side
and 3 on the other side
once they are removed just grab it by the back and pull up while holding the plastic facing. (images are of radio upside down)
then it should look like this
to take this board off you need to remove these screws
there are two ribbon cables that need to be removed as well, to take them out all you need to do is unclip the lock by sliding it out then slide the cables out.
you will need to flip the whole thing over and take off the selector rings off, they are only snapped in so all you need to do is pray them up, it's best to do it from both sides and use flat long parts (I used two old knife blades as thats what I had at hand)
so here is what we want
you need to take off the old lights, the bulb is part of the brown base and the base is soldered to the board you either cut them off or de-solder them but either way be careful not to rip up the the little contact strips under them (I found that using a flat nose pliers, gab the light at the base and twist them right off)
here is a closer look
closer
closer still
I was going to go closer but I don't have a macro flash yet, I need to buy oneok once you got them off find what side is (-) and that side is (+), honda made it easy
(mark what is what with a fresh sharpie so you don't forget of mess up)
the little lights in the knobs will be a pain in the buttocks but not impossible
here is a look inside without the old light
now prepare your LEDs to solder in
then solder it in (helps to keep it tilted to the side to give you room to work)
with the knobs done move onto the rest, everyone of the LEDs will need a resistor (one each)
here is what that shold look like when done
I tried to uses SMT resistor but they did not work as needed
he is the before (with SMT's)
and what I had to do after
now I could of done it like this
but I got lazy and the others I already had pre-made, the little sucks take a while to make look all nice like that.
this leaves two more to do next to the eject and disp buttons
they are easy and just poke through
once all that is soldered and good you will need to make some space for the new LEDS by taking these little guys out
from here
to take them out you need to take to buttons out to do the just push from the back and they should pop out but BE CAREFUL as there are two little plungers per button that will pop out at the same time so watch out for that (there are two one longer then the other)
once the clear things are out pop the buttons back and don't forget the little plungers.
here is a little look inside before the clear things are removed
(thank you Nokia N95 for having a nice macro flash so close to the lens
)ok so once you have everything all done just put it all back togather, there might be some fitment issues so you might need to tweek the positioning of the LEDs just a little for it to fit right.
and once it all gets put back together it will look like this
(please note that you need to enter the radio code before the lights work)
good luck, have fun, be calm, be happy.
after Nick (GETxERxDONE) gets his all done in blue I will post up his pics of what all this work looks like in blue
=================================
and now thanks to GETxERxDONE playing with his car you get to see what it looks like in blue yay
i know the colors of off..damn camera phone.
if you didnt notice, the 2 and 5 arent working. im going to fix it in the morning. and get some vid tomorrow night
and ugh..its still raining
(way more pics to come)i couldn't wait heh
_-= LINKS =-_
here are some places to get the stuff you are going to need
trusted links
http://stores.ebay.ca/best-offer-for-you-2010
http://stores.ebay.ca/led-hk/3mm-5m...-5mm-Round-LED-Bulb-/_i.html?_fsub=9872881&_sid=482459762&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
new places
Shop eBay Canada Store - sunpec:: SMD 1206 5, SMD 0805 5
for resistors and other things
eBay Store - Sure Electronics: Components, LEDs, Tools
Shop eBay Canada Store - PARTSPIPE:: SWITCHES, LED's Downlight Bulbs Bezels
enjoy and happy modding
we will soon have a all white dash light set up and two that will be a little different, one will be all white untill the shift light turns on when then it will turn all read, the other will be all red till Vtec kicks in at which point it will all turn to blue....
so stay tuned for all kinds of neet things to come
