Does anyone know how to change the Gauge lights or change the green on the cd player?

Does anyone know how to change the Gauge lights or change the green on the cd player?

ok this weekend i just changed the console light to red. now my interior looks kinda funky so i was wondering if u could change the cd player lights at all or the clock or the gauges. i saw somewher on 2003corolla.org that u can change the gauges lights but havent seen it again.

There is a running thread on here for this type of thing, Most cluster bulbs are #194 and you can get colored covers easy to change.

The clock you may have to try to filter to the color desired. (color plexiglass ??)

Changing the color of your head unit would be tricky without some good electronics, dissasembly and soldering skills. Most are now LED and small ones at that.

Look up the interior lighting thread, Lots of info there.

CW

i changed the radio lights the pics are pretty bad but it loks hella awsome. only thing is that there are around 50 leds to change outl. im just happy i like doing things like that
check it out here
http://groups.msn.com/iliksprite/ca...to&PhotoID=1204
did the lights in blue and white

I changed the color of my dash to red on my 98. I also did the stock radio when I had it. You need to get really small LED's for it, and the stock corolla radio has like 25 microsize led's. For the clock you can use a small piece of cellophane in between the plastic and the LED display, that is what I did. Here are a couple of pics of the completed project. They look pink on the pics, but they are red in real life.





If you are really interested I can tell you where to get the LED's and give you some hints.

X

That seems badass, I would love to change the LED's behind my clock and install a clear plastic cover for it. I would also like to beable to solder some LED's into the little on/off switches.

Since they are green and orange now, anyone know how to change those?

Nice job Laz! I want to know where you get the micosize light from. Or else i might have to desolder some red lights from my old cellphone.

I get all my electronic pieces from www.mouser.com

It took me a while to find the right LED's but these are the ones:

http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?han...odenumber=60610

They have them in different colors, but I used the Chicago Miniature LED SMD Standard*1206 RED WATER CLEAR Part # 606-7010X11

This is a direct link to them:

http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?han...e_pcodeid=60610

You can look at the data sheet to see what they look like. Good luck, and desodering and sodering those things are a pain in the ass! I know I burned my fingers a few times!

One more thing these LED's are only for the radio, for the other parts like the dashboard I bought standar #34 bulbs and the standard bulbs for the climate control and painted them red. I know other people have use LED's for those parts, but I found it easier to just paint them.

I have always had a problem soldering, When I go to solder 2 wires together the solder always just drips off the wire and doesn't stick.

Am I doing something wrong?

I think your whole dash and interior looks insane. I want to get some blue going throughout my interior

thanks for tha tips u guys but on tha 03 corolla is it still 25 led ?

Always heat the wire/joint first and then melt the solder onto it.

If anyone is working with those tiny L E Ds you need as low a wattage iron as possible and you must move very quick or you will damage components or PCB traces.

CW

yeah like craig said, heat the exposed wires up and then touch the solder to it. it'll look as if the wires are eating the solder.

Damn that looks tight. Good job.

How many lights and what kind would I need to change the white gauges to blue?

So I could solder blue lights onto it, I don't know how many lights are on it, I can tell where they are. I also don't know their size.

I think it would look insane.

Also on the on/off switches. I can get the little circuit out, but how do you go about unsoldering the lights on them?

well on my 00 there were only 4 bulbs to change the actual gauges. the sizes were 194s you dont need to solder you can just buy the led bulbs like that. teh only ones that you have to swap are those that are smaller then the 194s and the ones in the cd player

How do you unsolder lights?

Like the one's in the on/off switch?

I need a new soldering gun anyways ;P

For small work you need a 25-40 watt soldering iron. And you must work quickly to avoid damage.

I'd love a DIY, the soldering iron I have now has a humongous tip, I am going to buy a new one.

I want to resolder the lights on the on/off switches. I also accidently broke off the resistors on 2 of my LED's so I need to figure out what resistors I need for them.

They have 2 little bulb thigns under the light, they have a blue and red/orange one. I thought you only needed 1 resistor?

Anyways there is solder on the bottom of the LED that I probably need to take off so I can reattach some wire and get the light working again.

i usually do my soldering work on cell phones and to desolder lights i was taught to use two soldering iorns one in each hand. It takes some practice and patience but the board is big enough to allow some mistkes. i use 15 watt irons and its more then enough for the surface mount leds. just touch both sides and push the light to the side thats it. teh ghetto way you can just snip off the top of the led with a wire cutter or something with a flat base, then cut the remainding piece in half or use a razor to cut in half and desolder the 2 seperated pieces. You can get the leds off this way but run more of a chance of destroying the soldering points as you will be applying a lot of force to them. if you need pics i can go make a diy if you need

can do but which on off switch are you talking about? for your regulat leds (5mm or 3mm) all you need is the single resistor on either positive or negative side. For the surface mounts it depends really on how teh pcb is put together

On the A/C and on the Interior controls for your car, also the auto defrost. There are 3 buttons in a row and when you push them in a little square lights up green.

Now I looked on it, and there it is soldered on the reverse side of the light.

I was also wondering how hard would it be for me to solder some surface mount LED's onto my phone?

I have 6 green ones, and I really want to change them to blue, and they are pretty cheap too so

I need some soldering practice. I'll go buy a soldering gun here within the next week.

ok for the switches that you are talking about there are two ways you can go about it, you can go from the back like you saw and touch the back and push out the bulb, im lazy and didnt do it this way, the main reason would be fitting the new bulb into place since the soldering points are staggered. What i did was simply cut the old led off and place teh new one on top and solder it there. Yes i know its ghetto but it took a minute and no one will ever see it. Also i just made sure that the ends of the 3mm led lay on top of the old one for a few cm so i know there is no way it will come off as solder has a very high afinity for the legs of the leds. looking at the switches they are layed out
|__-__+__|
looking stright at it so just remeber that so you dont waste your time sticking it in the car and have it not working.
as for the phone what type of phone is it? certin phones dont take well to led changes, also you should be able to use a surface mount as your leds for the buttons the only thing is there is a lot of movement in the joint so you run the risk of knocking the led off the amount esspecially if you are just cutting the old led off and using those legs to wire too.
Overall i found taking the pieces off the car harder then doing the soldering, so if you could get all the buttons off thats the hard part
ill post some pics maybe today if i find something to solder ran out of leds and resistors gotta go order more but to lazy to get prices

The phone is a Nokia 5165, it has 6 led's and I wouldn't mind changing them to some Blue surface mount LED's.

I can take the pieces out of my dash extremely quickly since I have done it numerous times.

I was wondering , I accidently broke off the resistor on 2 LED's that I have and I don't know what kind of resistor it is. The LED's I have are 12V with 2 little resistor things on them?

I don't know what they are. So I am going to take the solder off and see if I can figure out what kind of resistor it is.