How difficult is it to change interior LED's?
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Senior Member
Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 147
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From: Scranton, PA
Vehicle: 2K1 Red Tib
How difficult is it to change interior LED's?
I see alot of people on here have done this and Ive always like the look of having blue (or in my case, all red) LED's inside. Is it a hard process to go through since theres so many LED's you have to unsolder and resolder? Ive never done this type of work before so I dont know how much of a shock I would be in. Shifty.gif
Senior Member
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 225
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Vehicle: 02/hyundai/accent
most lights in the car actually arent soldered, they use there own connectors, whether it be a wedge bulb or a d series bulb for the dome light a step light. its very easy, just take out the old halogen bulb and pop in the led. they make it very easy now adays
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Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 2,881
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From: Huntsville, AL
Vehicle: 2001/Hyundai/Tiburon
^^^ The cheapo way to do it.
I've done, or had done, a full conversion on my car. I sent my gauge cluster to DTN who put the glow faces and LED needles in. The rest I did on my own.
For the hvac controls, it's pretty in depth. I don't believe you can simply replace the bulbs as they're an odd size, but rather have to go through a whole re-wiring process. Took me about 10hrs of work to get it all up and running. Behind the hvac controls, there's a clear plastic piece, essentially as a diffuser for the light. It's one sold piece and goes behind all the knobs. I took that out, and put in about 4-6 LEDs per knob, and wired them all together. I believe I hooked some of them in series to reduce the brightness just a little. The really hard ones are the AC and recirculate buttons (I'm speaking for an RD2, but I believe it's similar for the RD1). You have to completely take those apart without breaking them, and then figure out how to get the LED and resistor wedged in there and connected to the right power sources. Not wildly hard, just takes a bit of figuring out and testing.
The window switches aren't terribly hard, there's already a small LED in there (not sure if it has the right resistor or not), so you simply have to replace that. Kinda tricky to fit it size-wise (be sure to get the smallest LEDs possible, 5mm I believe?), but it's doable.
There was a pretty in depth DIY on how it was done, so go try to find that first.
Totally worth the work, IMO, It looks amazing afterwards. Don't forget to get vent halos while you have your dash taken apart!
I've done, or had done, a full conversion on my car. I sent my gauge cluster to DTN who put the glow faces and LED needles in. The rest I did on my own.
For the hvac controls, it's pretty in depth. I don't believe you can simply replace the bulbs as they're an odd size, but rather have to go through a whole re-wiring process. Took me about 10hrs of work to get it all up and running. Behind the hvac controls, there's a clear plastic piece, essentially as a diffuser for the light. It's one sold piece and goes behind all the knobs. I took that out, and put in about 4-6 LEDs per knob, and wired them all together. I believe I hooked some of them in series to reduce the brightness just a little. The really hard ones are the AC and recirculate buttons (I'm speaking for an RD2, but I believe it's similar for the RD1). You have to completely take those apart without breaking them, and then figure out how to get the LED and resistor wedged in there and connected to the right power sources. Not wildly hard, just takes a bit of figuring out and testing.
The window switches aren't terribly hard, there's already a small LED in there (not sure if it has the right resistor or not), so you simply have to replace that. Kinda tricky to fit it size-wise (be sure to get the smallest LEDs possible, 5mm I believe?), but it's doable.
There was a pretty in depth DIY on how it was done, so go try to find that first.
Totally worth the work, IMO, It looks amazing afterwards. Don't forget to get vent halos while you have your dash taken apart!
