This is a story of how I wasted a couple of hours last night.

Having the stock CD changer, I didn't like the amber glow. I mean, if you can change the display color, why does it have to clash with the amber glow coming out of the other 800 buttons on the radio? I wanted to change it to blue.

You can easily take apart the front of your stock radio to peer inside. The front black panel is held on by 6 clips, 2 on the top and 2 on each side. After releasing those, pull out and up (2 tabs hold it on the bottom). Turning the black piece over is the circuit board used for input and with lots of LEDs. 8 screws hold the circuit board onto the black plastic piece. Take them off and pull up on the circuit board.

After you turn the circuit board over, you will notice about 35 LEDs. Two of these are green (on each side of the CD loader slot). The rest are amber. I shudder at the thought of replacing all 35 of these. They are TINY.

I attempted to color the LEDs blue using a blue Sharpie. Put the radio back together somewhat. Put in the box for a test. All the lights were still amber, a little darker. No light was coming through the blue markings. Took it out, tried again, and this time I got no light.

For whatever reason, the Sharpie must act as a conductor or something. There are lots of little copper circles all over the circuit board, some close to LEDs. Some of my colorings had a line of Sharpie connecting a little copper circle to the solder around an LED. Some LEDs are in groups of 3 and I colored them together. Removing the Sharpie marks around these LEDs got my soothing amber day-glow to return. Was the Sharpie causing some kind of connection problem? Yikes.

I noticed that with the blue sharpie on, amber light was still getting through, and not enough light was getting through to light up the button. The buttons only looked blue because the color of the display was blue, and that was spreading throughout the system. The blue Sharpie was blocking light, and what was getting through was amber.

Take it apart again, waste some more rubbing alcohol and paper towels, put it back together. Aaahhh, the amber glow...so soothing...

Seriously, this sucks. The amber doesn't even match any of the colors on the CD changer. Tangerine is the closest, and even that isn't it. That best idea I can come up with is to color the white plastic on the inside of the buttons green (as yellow and green make blue), but that would only make the buttons light up blue at night - during the day that would look green.

In summary, if you want to open your stock radio, be my guest. Just don't try to change the color to blue.

 

Yellow and green don't make blue, yellow and blue make green.

 

if your gonna take the time to remove the stock sterio, then just replace the piece of ____.
Designed poorly and only 160watts!


There is a good scion dash kit on ebay. Very easy. I just used it. The wiring harness is the standard toyota one.

 

In paint, maybe not. In light, yellow and green makes blue. Mix some lemonade and limeade and see what happens.

 

I suppose you love the microscopic buttons on aftermarket stereos.

 

My head unit doesn't have microscopic buttons. And two, I am not 50 years old, so if it did, I wouldn't mind. The usability for the factory head unit is terrible. I thought that even before i read reviews on it.

 

You're never going to make an orange lightbulb light up blue, so why try?

 

The reason a blue Sharpie on amber LEDs doesn't let much light through is simply that amber LEDs don't put out any blue light...

The blue Sharpie blocks amber, and amber is the only thing an amber LED really puts out.

 

you could buy a blue led and replace the original one. wouldn't be too hard if you know how to soder.

 

There are 35 LEDs. You wanna come over and help me replace them all?

Some of you people are SO helpful and encouraging. Yikes. Why do I post here again?

 

Somebody did replace them all. It wasn't on the scion radio, but it was on the camry nav system that he put in his xB....the led's were green and he wanted them to match the rest of his car. So, it is possible! BTW, he did mention they were TINY and it was a tedious job.

 

Well, you could have told us your plans before you started. That way you would have saved some time.

 

The LED swap can and has been done by Blue_Estel

https://www.scionlife.com/forums/vie...highlight=0603



You need approx. 30-35 0603 size LED's.

 

AHAHA hes listening to my goodies.....heh heh...

and what do you expect from us? if ur sharpie idea doesnt work then what do you suppose we tell you? the only 2 options are color the LEDs or replace them. pick one