gregeast

I'm really happy with them, much better than the stock lighting but not too bright. The red lighting is fairly diffuse, I'm definitely not being blinded. I've tried to take some pics but my photography skills don't do well at night. HTH.

Perry 951

I'll see if I can dig up my old write up in a few days. I really should put that site back up. Lots of work to link all the photos.

I could not find 12V LED's small enough to fit in the switches, and adding a resistor to a 1.5V lamp makes them too big. The ones on the board to illuminate the sliders are easy. You could grind down some larger ones, but still a pain. That's all I did.

billthe3

Here's another idea for just getting the colors to match - the fancy pants toyoders get the green lighting in their dashes by simply putting green rubber covers over the regular bulbs. I know the lexus guys go through and change out the colors of these things to make their dashes look all fancy like. Why not just go through and make some sort of cap from colored saran rap or something to put on all the bulbs and see if that does it? It obviously won't match the blue led color, but it may still get to a lighter blue.

mrmunky

that could be worth a shot bill, sounds kinda ghetto but whatever works. if no luck with that, i've got some led bulbs on the way that apparently will need to get ground down lol.. i will post results once i get some.

rollis

I was following this thread because I liked the idea of changing the color of lighting in my climate control. I saw the colored tubes just today in Autozone. Just wondering though, if they would lower the illumination even more than they are now.

mrmunky

just for the record, the 12v LEDs I ordered were way way too big to put in.. project on hold til winter break

billthe3

Were they 3mm ones?

FRporscheman

Post some pics!

Winter break.... you made me salavate.

gregeast

I looked long & hard at doing LED's but was struggling to find 12v LED's small enough to work in the climate control and I wasn't looking forward to re-soldering the leads.

So, I took a different tack. I had a can of Testor's Transparent Candy Apple Red spray paint around that I had experimented with to make the taillights red. I sprayed a little into a cup and used a small paint brush to paint the various bulbs in the climate control with a thin coat of red and....voila! it looks good.

My photography skills in the dark leave a bit to be desired but hopefully this will give you an idea. It looks perfect in person and the price was certainly right.

Keithr726

Looks cool Greg, especially that steering wheel

mrmunky

nice greg! ditto on the steering wheel i'll do the climate control with blue when i get home and post pics!

gregeast

Cool, looking forward to that, hopefully you'll be better than me at taking pics in the dark!

Looks like Testor's makes a Transparent Blue as well. Also, here's the red that I used:

Cass944

greg, your coolant tank is the most bad *** thing ever. too bad i dont have one anymore.

gregeast

Thanks, 35thSLP, a fellow Rennlister, made it to my design out of self-adhesive vinyl. He can make more if anyone else is interested.

It started out as kind of a joke, I was planning on buying a new tank but had other priorities for the car so this was going to be temporary. 35thSLP did such a great job that now I have to keep it!

billthe3

Very nice! Did you have any issues with the paint dripping on other parts as you were painting the bulbs? (was the paint watery or thicker?)