[coralman]

About six months ago,lol, I bought a bunch of led stuff after reading this thread by cAcHe which was a good one. http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f197/how-change-dash-light-93-98-zj-767865/ Not wanting to do anything major this weekend I decided I would do this. Pulling the control has been covered elsewhere so right to it. The 93-96 controls are a little different from the 97-98 but its got to be similar. Pull the knobs, and with a flat blade release the two upper and two lower snaps that hold the front cover on. We will be dealing with the three twist in gray sockets at the top and the NEO wedge style black socket to the left lower of the vacumn selector switch. Twist the gray ones out by pushing down and turning or lifting up the locking tangs and turning. The Neo style will twist out with a fine tip flat screw driver inserted in the slot on the back of the socket.

To the upper left of the Neo hole, you'll see a small hole that exposes two soldered pins on the small circuit board inside the control. Those are the ends of the white led for the A/C button. To have enough room to solder it out and in I had to make that hole larger. Tried a heated exacto but it was too slow,and the RS soldering iron came with a bunch of nifty tips so I switched to a pointy one and melted the hole out.

Turn the control over and pull off the A/C button straight up. This exposes the led. I had to make a rig to hold the led down so when I heated the pins I could pull the housing off the pins.

Heat up the iron.

 

[coralman]

Using some desoldering wick,I heated the pins and pulled most of the solder off the pins. then I kept heating them and wiggled the housing up off the led/needlenose/clampcombo. The old led stayed in the pliers. Got the new led from superbright, you can see that one leg is longer. This is the positive lead because they are are polarized and will only work one way. I guessed and was lucky. Later I figured out a way you wouldn't have to I think. Using the connector pinout you could read the back of the switch pins to figure out which was positve using a ohm meter to the plug pin and the trace on the circuit board. Insert the new led pins in the board and tape the led in place so it wont fall out while you are soldering it in.

Clip off the excess on the pins. This is the new NEO wedge blue led from superbrights. It just twist back into place. The superbright number for the others is in the pic,but you can get them off ebay as well. http://www.ebay.com/itm/8-pcs-T5-74...Parts_Accessories&hash=item2585697138&vxp=mtr
The sockets for those I got off ebay as well. http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-TWIST-LOC...Parts_Accessories&hash=item4acee3f822&vxp=mtr

Install them,put your A/C coverbutton back on,put the cover back on and you are good to go.

 

[coralman]

Had to wait till it got dark

 

[MaintMech]

Another terrific write up, Coralman.

:2thumbsup::2thumbsup:

 

[coralman]

Thanks Mech! I get bored.lol.

 

[coralman]

Overall I was happy with the way this looked. Only thing is the blue led's are filtered out on the temp selection knob,by the red hashmarks above the knob which makes them not visable. Soooo,I found some model train leds that come with flush mount bracketts in the color red. When I get them I will build an internal shield in the housing to block the blue light, install the red or maybe white leds and that wont bug me anymore. These little mounts may come in handy when I get around to doing the instrument cluster to make a custom light setup on that. Like keeping the pointers a solid color rather than the bleached out look if blue is used. The blue is not an ideal color in the cluster because it is distracting when in front of your face. Already have the radio color changeout in the works, and after looking at the setup in the door modules, it will be diificult but not impossible I think.

 

[zjosh93]

Good write up coralman! I need to get in there and replace one of those little bulbs anyway.

 

[coralman]

Thanks Josh! I got a heap of larger problems I need to deal with but have to wait till a cash flow {} problem gets better. So it was a fun easy thing to do on a weekend day.

 

[coralman]

Heres a link to the heated seat pod I did later.
http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f13/blue-leds-heated-seat-pod-2219577/

 

[coralman]

Finally got around to getting the red hash marks to show up like they should. Camera doesn't do well in low light . The blue is alot bluer.