As promised: DIY on how to change a/c lights to LED's

lgnd4u2nv · 01-20-06, 03:16 AM

(mods can move this, but i wasnt able to post this in the DIY section...)

DIY: How to change the light bulbs in the a/c unit to LED lights (or new stock ones).

NOTE: This is not hard at all to do, and cost me a total of about $20. I plan on making all of the dash lights the same red LED's, but I'm not sure as of now if it will be a similar process or not.

Tools: Screw Driver Set, 4 LED’s (see step 3), 4 resistors (see step 3), transparent colored film (optional see step 6), calculator, dremel tool

Step 1: Remove the A/C unit from the dash.

To do this, pry the wood trim off from around the gear shifter. Then take out the CD player. After this, look up under the a/c unit and you will see 2 screws that are at a slant, these are the ones holding it in. Once you take the screws out, just pull the unit out and disconnect the clips with all the cords. You should how have this:

Step 2: Take apart the unit to get to the circuit board.

There are 4 screws around the outside of the silver plastic box, take them out.

Now there is 1 more screw to get to that is not so easy because it is under the a/c vents

I found that you can drill a hole at the front-most edge of this little space on the top of the vents and you can stick a thin screw driver down in the hole to get the screw out. (There are also many other ways to get this screw out, just get creative…)

Once all 5 screws are out you can remove the grey box part by squeezing the two big sides together.

Step 3: Preparation to do the work.

At this point you have two choices. To just change the bulbs for LED’s or just new stock lights then you just have to give each of the light bulbs (blue) a ¼ turn to take them out. If you plan on making the digital display a different color then unscrew all of the screws (red) that are pointed to by the arrows. (below)

Next thing you have to do is get the LED’s and the correct resistors. First thing to do is to pick out the LED’s you are going to use. The first time I did this I got 3000mcd (brightness) LED’s and they weren’t quite bright enough so I ordered 6000mcd ones. Shaar told me that he used 4000mcd. It’s really up to you which ones you buy. I got mine from www.allelectronics.com. Now look on the package and see what the maximum amount of power they can handle (this is measured in Volts). I have a volt meter and measured that about 11V is traveling across the light bulb circuit. Now get out a calculator to do a little math. You are using Ohm’s law just rearranged a little bit. Do (maximum circuit power – maximum power handling)/Amps = Ohm resistor.
For example: mine were 3V, 20 mA so I did (11-3)/.02 = 400
I knew from this that I had to use at least a 400 Ohm resistor. Do not go lower than this number because you will blow the bulb, but going over this number is ok, just the light is not to its fullest potential brightness. To do just the A/C lights you need 4 LED’s and 4 resistors.

For best results: You need to shave off the end of the LED’s with a dremel tool. LED’s are made to have a very focused light beam, but shaving the end off will make the angle wider which will help there not be really bright buttons and really dark ones.

Step 4: Retrofitting the LED

The first thing to do is you have to get the light bulb out of the little plastic base (Notice how the metal wires are wrapped around the sides of the plastic piece to connect to the circuit board). I was not able to just pull them out, so I ended up getting pliers and breaking the glass then putting the tip of a screw driver down in the hole and twisted it to get all of the glass out of the bottom. Once you do this you will be left with ONLY the white plastic. This is very nice because you can mount the LED’s just like the lights were before. Now just stick the LED in the plastic base with the wires sticking out of the bottom.

Now with the negative (short) wire coming from the LED just wrap it around the plastic base like the stock one was. On the positive side (long) you need to either twist it around or solder it to one side of the resistor. With the other end of the resistor wrap it around the plastic base. Remember that space is limited so you want as little extra wire as possible. Also remember that you do not want any wire touching anything else.

(picture taken before I realized that shaving the end would be better)

Step 5: Re-install light

All you have to do now is stick the lights in the holes and give them a ¼ turn to lock them back in. Now, LED’s only work if power is flowing the right direction. So what I did was took the unit out to my car (still all taken apart) and plugged in the big wire harness and turned on the headlights. If they are in there correctly they will light up, if they don’t then take the lights out and put them in the other way.

Step 6: (Optional) If you want to change the color of your digital display all you have to do is find something that is transparent and the color you want yours to be. I ended up going to a craft store and buying a role of gift basket wrap that was clear and red. Now if you haven’t already take out all of the screws that is holding the circuit board in and the two holding the chrome box on. Then pull the board out. Cut a piece of the transparent paper and place it in front of the display. I checked the color out before putting everything back together to see if I wanted to put another layer or not.

Step 7: Reassemble everything in reverse. Be careful when putting the grey box back on because there is not a lot of room and you don’t want to mess up the connections you just make with the LED’s.

Now if you want to make your clock the same color as the other display, just unscrew the back to it and put another piece of transparent paper in front of it.

Once everything is back together….this is what you get…..the “hot spots” do not show up as bad in person, this is a long shutter speed with no flash picture, so the spots look really bad.

I hope everything works out for those of you that do this. And I also hope this thread doesnt get lost in 1 day and end up 5 pages back b/c I spent a lot of time on this. ENJOY!!!

-Richard

bl420 · 01-20-06, 03:26 AM

nice write-up... i'll be doing this soon with some crazy bright leds...

lgnd · 01-20-06, 05:43 AM

Can you post additional pictures about the led with resistor in the plastic socket? I'd like to see the bottom of the plastic socket. Awesome DIY. I'm satisfied with the stock green color, but I'm thinking about a blue conversion. Great idea to put the leds in the oem socket.

thanks for the pics!

lgnd4u2nv · 01-20-06, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lgnd

Can you post additional pictures about the led with resistor in the plastic socket? I'd like to see the bottom of the plastic socket. Awesome DIY. I'm satisfied with the stock green color, but I'm thinking about a blue conversion. Great idea to put the leds in the oem socket.

DONE!!!!

Fran · 01-20-06, 04:52 PM

Nice job.. Now I'll be waiting for the other write up's on all the dash LED's to red.

acc-unit · 01-21-06, 09:27 PM

awesome write up thanks a lot! i plan on doing this with my a/c lights, ill take pics when i'm done

GoldenCoupe · 02-01-06, 02:02 AM

I've got a question for you...to make your display red, did you apply your red transparency on top of the orange filter? Or did you remove the orange filter and replace it with red? Thanx...

lgnd4u2nv · 02-01-06, 02:36 PM

If you look up at step 3, first you have to take out all of the screws holding the circuit board in place along with the 2 screws holding that little chrome box on. the wires are just long enough to lift the circuit board up and out. Then i just took the transparent-red film i bought and cut it to fit between the display(which is connected to the circuit board) and the orange filter thing your talking about. I really dont think it is orange b/c it doesnt effect the color of the digital display. I know that Shaar used some blue/purple transparent film, and it showed up blue with out any hint of orange.

Summary: just leave everything alone, just add the transparent film between the display and orange filter.

GoldenCoupe · 02-01-06, 05:52 PM

Cool...thanx!!

Octane · 02-08-06, 01:05 PM

The orange film is there to change the blue display to green (so that it matches the rest of the stock interior dash lighting). If the orange part is removed, the display will look blue-ish (like the early 90s integra dash).

I think it was VolkRacing who took out the original tint and replaced it with pink or purple to get his display to look white (actually I think he did this with his clock display).

JTJohnny102 · 02-08-06, 06:47 PM

hmm hotspotting is actually worse in person than it is in the pictures, i think ill try something else, but then again the locations for the bulbs on the non auto climate is different

bl420 · 02-09-06, 12:14 AM

why dont you try wide angle LEDs? or 360 degree LEDs

JTJohnny102 · 02-09-06, 01:54 AM

theres not enough room to shove bigger led bulbs into the area that you're given

Octane · 02-09-06, 02:47 AM

The LED should be roughed up all over to spread the light better. Additionally, one could grind down the sides to create a pie wedge or pyramid that would spread the light to the sides better.

bl420 · 02-09-06, 02:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTJohnny102

theres not enough room to shove bigger led bulbs into the area that you're given

im not talking about putting in those tower LED matrix bulb with more than one LED..

im talking about 360 degree viewing angle single 5mm LEDs
http://www.superbrightleds.com/leds.htm

scroll down.... when you buy from a reputable company they'll usually have a data sheet on the specific viewing angle of the particular LED....
thats one of the reason why LED's are measure in millicandela and not lumens like regular light bulbs

01-20-06, 03:16 AM	#1 (permalink)
lgnd4u2nv Registered User Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Charlotte, NC Posts: 1,061 Car 1: 1991 Acura Legend iTrader: (2)	As promised: DIY on how to change a/c lights to LED's (mods can move this, but i wasnt able to post this in the DIY section...) DIY: How to change the light bulbs in the a/c unit to LED lights (or new stock ones). NOTE: This is not hard at all to do, and cost me a total of about $20. I plan on making all of the dash lights the same red LED's, but I'm not sure as of now if it will be a similar process or not. Tools: Screw Driver Set, 4 LED’s (see step 3), 4 resistors (see step 3), transparent colored film (optional see step 6), calculator, dremel tool Step 1: Remove the A/C unit from the dash. To do this, pry the wood trim off from around the gear shifter. Then take out the CD player. After this, look up under the a/c unit and you will see 2 screws that are at a slant, these are the ones holding it in. Once you take the screws out, just pull the unit out and disconnect the clips with all the cords. You should how have this: Step 2: Take apart the unit to get to the circuit board. There are 4 screws around the outside of the silver plastic box, take them out. Now there is 1 more screw to get to that is not so easy because it is under the a/c vents I found that you can drill a hole at the front-most edge of this little space on the top of the vents and you can stick a thin screw driver down in the hole to get the screw out. (There are also many other ways to get this screw out, just get creative…) Once all 5 screws are out you can remove the grey box part by squeezing the two big sides together. Step 3: Preparation to do the work. At this point you have two choices. To just change the bulbs for LED’s or just new stock lights then you just have to give each of the light bulbs (blue) a ¼ turn to take them out. If you plan on making the digital display a different color then unscrew all of the screws (red) that are pointed to by the arrows. (below) Next thing you have to do is get the LED’s and the correct resistors. First thing to do is to pick out the LED’s you are going to use. The first time I did this I got 3000mcd (brightness) LED’s and they weren’t quite bright enough so I ordered 6000mcd ones. Shaar told me that he used 4000mcd. It’s really up to you which ones you buy. I got mine from www.allelectronics.com. Now look on the package and see what the maximum amount of power they can handle (this is measured in Volts). I have a volt meter and measured that about 11V is traveling across the light bulb circuit. Now get out a calculator to do a little math. You are using Ohm’s law just rearranged a little bit. Do (maximum circuit power – maximum power handling)/Amps = Ohm resistor. For example: mine were 3V, 20 mA so I did (11-3)/.02 = 400 I knew from this that I had to use at least a 400 Ohm resistor. Do not go lower than this number because you will blow the bulb, but going over this number is ok, just the light is not to its fullest potential brightness. To do just the A/C lights you need 4 LED’s and 4 resistors. For best results: You need to shave off the end of the LED’s with a dremel tool. LED’s are made to have a very focused light beam, but shaving the end off will make the angle wider which will help there not be really bright buttons and really dark ones. Step 4: Retrofitting the LED The first thing to do is you have to get the light bulb out of the little plastic base (Notice how the metal wires are wrapped around the sides of the plastic piece to connect to the circuit board). I was not able to just pull them out, so I ended up getting pliers and breaking the glass then putting the tip of a screw driver down in the hole and twisted it to get all of the glass out of the bottom. Once you do this you will be left with ONLY the white plastic. This is very nice because you can mount the LED’s just like the lights were before. Now just stick the LED in the plastic base with the wires sticking out of the bottom. Now with the negative (short) wire coming from the LED just wrap it around the plastic base like the stock one was. On the positive side (long) you need to either twist it around or solder it to one side of the resistor. With the other end of the resistor wrap it around the plastic base. Remember that space is limited so you want as little extra wire as possible. Also remember that you do not want any wire touching anything else. (picture taken before I realized that shaving the end would be better) Step 5: Re-install light All you have to do now is stick the lights in the holes and give them a ¼ turn to lock them back in. Now, LED’s only work if power is flowing the right direction. So what I did was took the unit out to my car (still all taken apart) and plugged in the big wire harness and turned on the headlights. If they are in there correctly they will light up, if they don’t then take the lights out and put them in the other way. Step 6: (Optional) If you want to change the color of your digital display all you have to do is find something that is transparent and the color you want yours to be. I ended up going to a craft store and buying a role of gift basket wrap that was clear and red. Now if you haven’t already take out all of the screws that is holding the circuit board in and the two holding the chrome box on. Then pull the board out. Cut a piece of the transparent paper and place it in front of the display. I checked the color out before putting everything back together to see if I wanted to put another layer or not. Step 7: Reassemble everything in reverse. Be careful when putting the grey box back on because there is not a lot of room and you don’t want to mess up the connections you just make with the LED’s. Now if you want to make your clock the same color as the other display, just unscrew the back to it and put another piece of transparent paper in front of it. Once everything is back together….this is what you get…..the “hot spots” do not show up as bad in person, this is a long shutter speed with no flash picture, so the spots look really bad. I hope everything works out for those of you that do this. And I also hope this thread doesnt get lost in 1 day and end up 5 pages back b/c I spent a lot of time on this. ENJOY!!! -Richard __________________ The Performance Handling Sedan Ksport Coilovers, MLS strut bar, Fut's rear tie bars, ADDCO rear sway bar MAY 10TH CHARLOTTE NC LEGEND MEET! CLICK HERE Winter NC meet picture and discussion thread! Last edited by lgnd4u2nv : 01-20-06 at 01:28 PM.

01-20-06, 03:26 AM	#2 (permalink)
bl420 Dont Catch Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Bogata, Lima Posts: 4,813 Car 1: 1991 Sedan iTrader: (16)	nice write-up... i'll be doing this soon with some crazy bright leds... __________________ Anti Alpine Type-R Thread

01-20-06, 05:43 AM	#3 (permalink)
lgnd EDM KA8 owner Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Budapest Hungary Posts: 713 Car 1: EDM KA8 '91 Car 2: EDM KA8 '91 RIP iTrader: (10)	Can you post additional pictures about the led with resistor in the plastic socket? I'd like to see the bottom of the plastic socket. Awesome DIY. I'm satisfied with the stock green color, but I'm thinking about a blue conversion. Great idea to put the leds in the oem socket. thanks for the pics! __________________ www.honda-legend.hu For Sale: Custom ADDCO rear sway bar shoulder bolts Last edited by lgnd : 01-21-06 at 09:57 AM.

01-21-06, 09:27 PM	#6 (permalink)
acc-unit legend status Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 1,659 Car 1: 1995 6spd coupe iTrader: (2)	awesome write up thanks a lot! i plan on doing this with my a/c lights, ill take pics when i'm done __________________ 1990 Legend sedan - RIP 1995 6 spd coupe

02-01-06, 02:02 AM	#7 (permalink)
GoldenCoupe Legendary Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: San Antonio, TX Posts: 509 Car 1: 1993 Cashmere Silver LS Coupe iTrader: (0)	I've got a question for you...to make your display red, did you apply your red transparency on top of the orange filter? Or did you remove the orange filter and replace it with red? Thanx... __________________ 93 Cashmere Silver LS Coupe My Legend's sad

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01-20-06, 04:52 PM	#5 (permalink)
Fran Registered User Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: MA Posts: 346 Car 1: 95 Legend GS Blk/Type F iTrader: (0)	Nice job.. Now I'll be waiting for the other write up's on all the dash LED's to red.

02-01-06, 02:36 PM	#8 (permalink)
lgnd4u2nv Registered User Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Charlotte, NC Posts: 1,061 Car 1: 1991 Acura Legend iTrader: (2)	If you look up at step 3, first you have to take out all of the screws holding the circuit board in place along with the 2 screws holding that little chrome box on. the wires are just long enough to lift the circuit board up and out. Then i just took the transparent-red film i bought and cut it to fit between the display(which is connected to the circuit board) and the orange filter thing your talking about. I really dont think it is orange b/c it doesnt effect the color of the digital display. I know that Shaar used some blue/purple transparent film, and it showed up blue with out any hint of orange. Summary: just leave everything alone, just add the transparent film between the display and orange filter. __________________ The Performance Handling Sedan Ksport Coilovers, MLS strut bar, Fut's rear tie bars, ADDCO rear sway bar MAY 10TH CHARLOTTE NC LEGEND MEET! CLICK HERE Winter NC meet picture and discussion thread!

02-01-06, 05:52 PM	#9 (permalink)
GoldenCoupe Legendary Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: San Antonio, TX Posts: 509 Car 1: 1993 Cashmere Silver LS Coupe iTrader: (0)	Cool...thanx!! __________________ 93 Cashmere Silver LS Coupe My Legend's sad

02-08-06, 01:05 PM	#10 (permalink)
Octane Old S*hool Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada Posts: 2,251 Car 1: Previous: 1991 Pewter Grey Metallic L Sedan. Current: 1994 Blk/Blk LS Coupe iTrader: (6)	The orange film is there to change the blue display to green (so that it matches the rest of the stock interior dash lighting). If the orange part is removed, the display will look blue-ish (like the early 90s integra dash). I think it was VolkRacing who took out the original tint and replaced it with pink or purple to get his display to look white (actually I think he did this with his clock display). __________________

02-08-06, 06:47 PM	#11 (permalink)
JTJohnny102 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nebraska Posts: 3,639 Car 1: 93 Black L Coupe Car 2: 91 Red LS Coupe(RIP) iTrader: (1)	hmm hotspotting is actually worse in person than it is in the pictures, i think ill try something else, but then again the locations for the bulbs on the non auto climate is different __________________ http://www.cardomain.com/ride/773155

02-09-06, 12:14 AM	#12 (permalink)
bl420 Dont Catch Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Bogata, Lima Posts: 4,813 Car 1: 1991 Sedan iTrader: (16)	why dont you try wide angle LEDs? or 360 degree LEDs __________________ Anti Alpine Type-R Thread

02-09-06, 01:54 AM	#13 (permalink)
JTJohnny102 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Nebraska Posts: 3,639 Car 1: 93 Black L Coupe Car 2: 91 Red LS Coupe(RIP) iTrader: (1)	theres not enough room to shove bigger led bulbs into the area that you're given __________________ http://www.cardomain.com/ride/773155

02-09-06, 02:47 AM	#14 (permalink)
Octane Old S*hool Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada Posts: 2,251 Car 1: Previous: 1991 Pewter Grey Metallic L Sedan. Current: 1994 Blk/Blk LS Coupe iTrader: (6)	The LED should be roughed up all over to spread the light better. Additionally, one could grind down the sides to create a pie wedge or pyramid that would spread the light to the sides better.

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