so... after a lot of butterflys, and a lot of sweat, My friend Danny and I were able to do the LED swap for the gauges. We were very happy with the results.....

My gauges are white, my friends are blue...

Enjoy!







and tomorrows nightmare.... will be changing the LEDs in the console!!!

UPDATE - CONSOLE COMPLETE
and here are the pics....









i am in no way shape for form a good photographer, but im sure you can get the picture from the photos. The ONLY really difficult part was getting the LCD off, the rest was a breeze. I used the jumper method for this, and the only part where i can tell the brightness difference in the LCD part, and NO WAY am i going to deal with taking that off again. So for the perfectionists out there, don't use the jumper method. However, for my likes, it will be just fine. Hope you enjoyed!

 

lol good job with the leds, i found the center console top be horrible from the fact that white and blue leds are ery dim, theres a special way you have to do them to get them to work, plus the lcd screen is whats really gonna kill u, good luck

 

eh, im not afraid to cut a few leads and solder some new resistors... you have to unsolder and solder new LEDs anyway, it cant be much different. But thanks for the kind words!

 

hmm.. takes abit to solder in the resistors and cut the traces...

i follow engifineer's directions step by step... it takes about an hour or two.. good luck!

oh.. and great work on the gauges!

 

^^^ same here with squall, except when my friend helped me, we basically use speaker wire from one led to the other, making it like jumper cables which brightnened it alot

 

speaker wire?! i just use the resistor leads.... they're long enough.. if not.. connect some together..

 

yea, u can do that too, we just used what was available

 

Nice Job there buddy

 

Sweet!! Nice job Chris!!

 

Hey that looks like my new gauges....wait a minute, THOSE ARE MY NEW GAUGES!! Job well done partner, now for the big part see you later, my house, lol.

 

Nice job on the gauges. Be careful with that center console LCD screen!!! GET SOLDER BRAID if you don't already have it, don't try to jerry-rig something to unsolder it. Good luck, looks good so far.

 

Thank you everyone!

 

im going to try and paint my needles white with the semi transparent for model toys, i hope it works out good cuz my orange needles need to be changed since i dont have n e thing else in my car orange

 

Don't use braid...use a de-soldering vacuum...it's roughly 1 billion times faster.

And for the new wires in there, use enamel coated wire from radioshack. It's super thin so you don't really need to hack up plastic to fit it.

 

http://www.clubsciontc.com/modules.p...1863&start=165

 

yup thats what i plan on doing for my console

however, Miggz console is in blue, so ill need to change the resistors and and cut/run some new leads.

 

great cuz viro was the one that helped me do mine

 

I insulate the leads to all the resistors, so the plastic still needs to be cut a little for them. That way I cut it to just barely miss which gives them some extra support down the road.

The desoldering vacuums are great.. I just still have a bunch of solder braid.. I have used it so much over the years I can do it almost as fast with it I also like using it to clean off the pads once I remove the other LEDs. I then re-tin them with fresh solder. But I still use the "sucker" off and on too :D

A nice touch on the console is to replace the second LED on the temp dial with blue, then replace the third with red. You actually get a stripe that fades from blue, to purple, to red that way.. MUCH nicer IMO. Makes for a nice touch.

 

Ahh...yes...lead insulation...I used random wires I had laying around and ripped them apart...I was thinking more for the 2 non-resistored wires

And vacuum faster for the incompetents...like me. Two passes down the pins and I can usually pull the screen out...with braid I got angry and burned myself

 

^^ Oh, dont feel bad.. I still burn myself from time to time. I think it is tradition that when soldering I at least burn myself once I then get to let out all the swear words for the day (unless the fiance and child are home... then I get to go outside and do it ). I used to despise solder braid, especially after working in a lab with a $5000 soldering setup with a hot iron/mecanical vacuum system, first pass every time. But once I got used to it I started using it more. It takes a lot of practice to do it right. But like I said, I will probably use it up and go back to the sucker.

By the way mandos.. good ol walmart is out of the neon red paint. I have neon blue, green, etc, but was wondering if you have tried the "Bright Red" on the needles instead of neon. I am pretty sure it wont come out bright enough, but thought I would see if you had tried it. I can look around for another neon red.

And for the needles above, they look great, but just in case you want to get rid of that orange dot in the middle of them, they do come apart with a little heat. You can turn them over, heat the two melted parts and take out the needle. That way you can remove all the orange and repaint them. Then just glue it all back together. But good job on the swap! For the HVAC module, just take your time on the LCD. Desolder until it will literally fall out in your hand.