Dash Light Mod Success

thanks man...hope someones got an answer

 

it appears that you ripped the solder pad off the odo area. therefore, you have nothing to melt the solder to. i would PM prerunnerseth to see if he has a better way, but the only way i see is to CAREFULLY scratch away some of green overlay until you get to bare metal that leads to that pad area and then solder a jumper of thin wire to connect them. i did this on another board one time and it worked.

concerning the speedo, it appears that you have all the polarity correct. the only thing i can think of is you either have a bad LED or one of the joints is not soldered correctly. go around again w/ the iron and melt them to ensure good contact.

 

you should not have to press anything down. touch the iron to the pad to melt the solder, then simply slide the LED along the board until it is properly placed. then solder the other end and your good. pressing down on them and such will just induce stresses on them...

 

i do a simple mod where i run individual 5mm Led's behind the gauges. This way i can put the led's anywhere and the'll be sure to be bright. i run the wires thru the holes from the needle motors and then run them all together in parallel to a single wire that gets its power from a tap splitter from a positive line from the fuse box. the hole process takes an hour and there's no worry about something going wrong when de-soldering the tiny led's on the main pcb board

 

wow!

 

not my style, but wow.

 

I'll stick with the Orange thankyou

 

Nice mod. I wanna do this one.

 

Interesting method, a little more pitures of your process would be helpful, the finished results look nice, but why the different colors? gives it a christmas-y
feeling

 

anyone in laredo know how to do this?

 

thats one way to phrase it!

yea, i would like to see pics of the cluster before the face is installed too...

 

x2 I wanna see where he ran the wires and how they are secured.

Very cool looking though

 

It would be perfectly trippy on a 70's microbus, but I wouldn't do ^^that^^ to a tacoma.

I'm stoked to say I finally ordered the 70 or something leds to do the cluster, needles and guages. I'm going to try a new blue/white mix on the radio to match the white guage faces/ blue needles.

Anyone remember off the top of their head how to change the AC and Int Air Circ buttons? Were they just LEDs too?

 

^^good luck with the radio. I talked to seth about it and he said soldering under the screen is a big pain in the A**

"depends on the year you have. the newer radios have a lot more. The 05-08 radio has like 60+.. Changing the LEDs under the screen is a royal pain in the ass. some bend back the leads to the screen to get to them. I solder under the screen. bending them is very dangerous in my mind, But soldering under the screen is difficult."

 

^ its not that bad...yes, harder than the rest, but its not nearly impossible like your making it out to be!

05-08 have 52, 09+ have 64.

 

well if I ever end up with a spare factory radio I'll probably do it. but untill then Ill enjoy my already blue pioneer

 

Yeah Seth was really pesimistic in talking to me too, but I'm still going for it. I'm going to try to solder under the board, but I may well do a slight bend to get a bit more work space. It'll all come down to how I feel that day. Thankfully (?) I have an 07 so that means less soldering.

 

do yourself a favor and just bend the pins...it will be MUCH easier and you will like your life more. if you try to solder under the screen, you will get so pissed and just jab the board w/ the soldering iron...i can almost guarantee it!

just use the surrounding plastic holder to evenly bend it...hold it back w/ tape...and bend back w/ the plastic holder...simple.

 

Cool will do. Just waiting for the LEDs to get here, perfect rainy day to do them.