How To: Change interior to LED. *UPDATED INFO*
 

In this write up you will learn how to switch various interior pieces to LED's. For these projects all you need is basic tools to dissasemble car. A good soldering iron, fine solder( I use .032"), 12 volt leds or normal if you know what resistors to use ( 11-14 for IP cluster, 4-14 for HVAC control, 1 for each window or lock switch. The amount of leds you will use depends on the color. You will also need time and some decent soldering skills.

You will first need to remove the piece you will be swapping. It's all really simple to pull any piece out but if in doubt run a search on here there is plenty of help.

Leds only operate in one direction of power there for you will need to find out the positive and negative sides of each bulb on each piece. You can replug piece into vehicle to measure or use the pins I state and power them up outside the car. If you don't know how to read the pins on a piece, its best to replug into car.

The door lock, mirror, window switches, and HVAC are all the same through out the years. clusters and radios are different.

I will start with the cluster. Disassembly is very straight forward to get apart. Only difficult part is getting needles off. I use a pair of bent tweezers. To remove bulbs grab with needle nose pliers and twist off. Test for power polarity in car or ground to pins 15,16 power to pin 8. Review the pictures to see where I placed my leds. The simplest way is the basic triangle one led at each point of a triangle and one pointing to the needle. You can change the needle to any color you want with a simple paint scrape and repaint. Use an orange sticker over red areas to retain color. To rezero cluster: if your doing this in vehicle put full tank of fuel in first so your can set the guage to full. On key on engine off the tach and speedo should be set at zero(Crazy huh?) and fuel to full. Start car shut off and recheck for zero. To rezero out of vehicle aplply ground to pins 15,16 and touch power to pin 13 for ten seconds and release the gauges will sit at zero(you'll get the hang real quick). Once all set reassemble and enjoy.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_4948.jpg
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http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_4960.jpg
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The HVAC is jusy as easy to take apart. Pull the fan speed knob off and pry faceplate off at the four lock tabs. Remove stock bulbs in the same manner. Again test for power and ground polarity. On the 8-pin plug pin 5 is ground and pin 2 is lamp supply. Solder in leds 'till your happy with results and use the same orange sticker as seen on guage face above to retain your red.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...%20Swaps/4.jpg
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...%20Swaps/5.jpg
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Door locks are fairly simple not much to write up on it. Again self explanitary to open. Once open you will need to desolder the plug and then the stock bulb. The board is marked for the pins so no testing will need to be done in car. Pin A is the ground pin B is the lamp B+. Solder in led and reassemble.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5019.jpg
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Mirror switch comes apart same as window. You will need to carefully pry off the pin retainer. Remove bulb and solder in led. Pin B is ground and Pin E is lamp B+. reassemble. Blue and white seen above.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5018.jpg
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_4981.jpg


Window switches come apart same as above. Remove stock bulbs and again test for polarity like you have in every other piece. On Driver switch Pin B is lamp B+ and ground is Pin F. On passenger switch Pin B is lamp B+ and Pin C is ground. Colored shots seen above.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5023.jpg
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5024.jpg


I will Add for steering wheel controls when redo mine but the leds are 0805 leds in size.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_4453.jpg


Any questions or comments on what to change POST UP!! Thanks everyone for your support.

Gotta say the white dash looks great, good job, great pics. And thanks for the inspiration, I've changed my lights to blue too, and the only PITA was the steering wheel controls, just cause the surface mount leds are stupid small.

http://i1176.photobucket.com/albums/...4/IMAG0592.jpg
Did that last night. I put 3 of the 3mm 12v leds in there and just took out the stock bulb completely. Then just tapped intomy interior leds for power.

Try doing the stock radio, lol there's like 37 or something of those surface mount LEDs,
I got er done tho , few beers and a bunch of cursing and swearing lol

Ok now that PRNDL piece looks amazing i want to do this but i dont trust myself with that kind of stuff
great writeup though

just did this in blue with most of my interior, looks sweet gonna do the steering wheel tomorrow, but what are the orange stickers u used and were did u buy them? cuz the red on my hvac controlles is very dim.

there pictured in one of my threads just colored tags out of walmarts office section

Got the red radio......will get internal pics later.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5412.jpg

ok i dont know which one ill get an answer but ill ask on both. Has anyone done the boost gauge? such as changing the LED and face. I have blackkat customs designing me one for my cluster and was looking to see if it can also be done to the boost gauge so they will match.

you dont need to switch leds for gauge faces, here's mine with just the face no led swap (same thing for the boost gauge just no pic)
http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/...9/IMAG0438.jpg

BlackCat gauges are much more expensive than LEDs.

just did the blue interior LED's and gotta say thanks man looks amazing compared to stock.

Advice for the novice at soldering, if you put a little flux on the contact surface the solder will bond much easier....

This is an awesome write up man, hopefully I'll get to do this to my Balt soon. I just want everything to be bright white. Gonna be some work but this write up is gonna help soooo much when I finally get around to it, lol.

how well does it dim after you led everything?

depends on setup and color. but mine with all 12v leds dim almost the same as factory. they are a little brighter at full dim but then again they start out brighter at max brightness. its to hard to picture or video of what your really seeing.

good to know. if i were to do it id want just white no color change for a brighter more led like look

alot of my LEDS came in...all i gotta say the surface mount ones for the steering wheel controls holy shyt are those small how in gods name do those go on! i bought 20 of the and they came in a gaint strip...

I don't know how many versions of the steering wheel there are, but mine doesn't look like this and I had PLENTY of room for a 5mm LED. I ground them down anyway, but after checking it out it all worked fine with no modification. If you want I could get some pics to include "other" steering wheel controls.

well i contacted OP and he told me to use the 0805 surface mount ones for steering wheel controls. i have yet to take anything apart im waiting for my blackkat cutom cluster and boost guage to come in. but if you can get another pics that would be kool. i have a 2008 cobalt ss

2007 and uP the steering controls are 0805 surface mounts

Just gotta take
Your time and be patient

hey OP, when i swapped my cluster i was reading directions that you needed to screw the needles counterclockwise a good few times and then pull out while you're still screwing... said the part could be damaged if not done that way, just my .02 otherwise i'm in on this

true, but i also got them for the silver faces and stuff

Rather than worrying about resetting the gauges just use a piece of tape to mark where they come to rest and put them on back in the same spot. Also a normal fork works great for pulling the needles off. Don't turn them to take them off unless you want to recalibrate them afterwards

pics of steering controls not much to say but small

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5536.jpg
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5543.jpg

My pioneer radio adapted steering wheel controls
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p...s/DSC_5539.jpg

did my SS gauge in blue, need to do some tweeks, i'll get to that later but i think it looks pretty good, its a lot deeper blue then it looks in the pics
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6329/imagebbw.jpg

This is my setup so far, boost gauge is next, just ordered 1204 smled's which im pretty sure are the right size, i'll do a little how to when i do it i think and post it here, even though i know black cat customs did one already.
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/8954/imagewge.jpg

Here are my new cluster and boost gauge!

http://i1213.photobucket.com/albums/...51889514_n.jpg


http://i1213.photobucket.com/albums/...85374699_n.jpg

Nice, jhezzy. Looks fly!

Thank you

yup looks good man

Here is another pic from further away kinda blurry sry!

http://i1213.photobucket.com/albums/...19803932_n.jpg

^^^wery nice

damn i wish i could pay someone to do this!!

So, I have an 06, the steering wheel led's are 3mm, are the rest 3mm as well in the hvac & windows ect?

It versus to what button your working on, hvac is 5 mm window switch is 5 can't remember what the fog light or mirror switch is tho

Where do u get your 12v 5mm and 3mm green LEDs?

I picked up some 12v LEDs from led switch.com and there dim as could be, not bright at all

Where can I get good leds.

this is going to help me a lot!!

i bought my leds for my led conversion from Oznium- (surface mounts for steering wheel) and i went to let-switch for my 3mm 12v for my all other switches. hvac, foglights, traction control, window, mirror, and door locks. mirror lock is the hardest to do took about 2 hrs just do that switch alone.