Rattlerattle

The light for the climate controls no longer illuminates. Rest of insturments are fine. Is there a seperate fuse or relay for just the climate control lighting?

infidel

All the lights that dim run off the same fuse. You could have a loose wire or bad bulb.

dakar

Check the bulbs... I'd assume they use the same as my 01, if they are dead I understand folks have been having a real problem finding replacements extra from the dealer.... If you run into trouble finding replacements shoot me a PM and I'll snail mail you a couple, I converted mine entire dash including the lighting and climate control displays over to LED's instead and still have the factory bulbs.

Dave

This offer void where prohibited and subject to revocation at any time, limited quantities, first come - first served...

Dr. Evil

Never mind the bulbs....Id like to know (Im sure Im not the only one) where you got your LED'S, how you like them, part numbers and approximate cost.

Thanx.

dakar

You can get the LED's anywhere... I'm very partial to blue, so now my stock dash is now backlit blue All I did was replace each bulb with a 3600mcd (super super bright) LED (5mm) (I ordered a few hundred of them direct from China via an eBay dealer for $.10 each), but they can be had at RipOff Shack for a couple bucks each if you want blue or other colors for cheaper. A little math told me that since these particular LED's max out at 30ma @ 3.3v solder a 380ohm 1/4watt resistor in series to drop the voltage, use a leads from the LED and resistor to wrap around the base of the little plug thingy to get power from the panel. Done deal, they won't really dim much using the dimmer **** but they are the right brightness for me.

Really quite simple, and a lot cheaper then paying ~$150ish for the replacement insrument cluster/climate control panels that would do the same thing.

Guestimate on costs...
$.39 for a 6 pack of resistors
$2 each for the LED's (via RipOff Shack)
solder and flux always on hand.

Total time maybe an hour for the climate/light control panels, for the instrument panel took maybe two hours, used a pair of 3mm LED's (in series with 120 ohm resistor) to replace each 197 bulb. I need to do a little adjustment to the illumination angles yet to get a little more even lighting yet, there are plastic 'light guides' in the cluster to distribute the light across the dash.

Did the same thing with the ashtray and the cubby hole lights. IMO everything looks great!

Rattlerattle - sorry didn't mean to hijack your thread....

Dave

Dr. Evil

Thanks very much Dave......an interesting approach - I bet it looks great.

Rattlerattle - apologies for getting off topic.

Rattlerattle

Mhhhh....

Maybe that is the way to go with LED's instead of trying to replace standard bulbs.

Thanks now I will have to look at the whole dash and not just the climate control.

I PASS GAS

dakar:

Is there any chance you could get some night time pictures up for us? I'd really like to do that, but would really like to see it first because I have a hard time invisioning what it looks like.

Would it be safe to say it looks like the VolksWaggen dash?

Thanks,
Josh

scuzman00

I had same problem with illumination at headlight switch. I went to rip-off shack and found a similar replacement bulb (had to modify leads and base a little) but it works fine. search my past posts and the model # for the bulb is there somewhere. Cost was around a buck and a half if I remember correctly. A deal vs the price of a new switch. And btw, Dodge has no part # for the dash bulbs if you have not already found that out.

Gary

dakar

I PASS GAS - sure I'll try to get some taken one night this week and post them up in the gallery... want to hack on the ISSPro gauge lights first, Boost and FP are still white and driving me nuts....

sorry don't know what a VW dash looks like... so can't compare.

Dave

I PASS GAS

dakar:

Thank you, I look forward to seeing the dash.

Here is a picture of what the VW dash looks like. This is what I'm hoping yours looks like. Not that I won't like it, but I've always loved the colors of the VW dash.

I looked on ebay and saw the lights you ordered. Quite a savings, comes out to $.25 a piece after you figure in the $15 bucks shipping

dakar

Now that we've managed to completely hijack this thread.......

Thats pretty much the effect I have with the stock panels being backlit with blue LED's, except for the LCD for the odo and such. We have VFD's (Vacumm Florescant Displays) instead, so I'm in search of some of that special gel film they use for stage lighting to fix that.

Dave