Help with white LED light swap?

[NOPROBROBB]

I know there are posts on this but has anyone swapped out all LEd lights in their gauges, HAVOC controls, and all the instrument lights in general so that they apear hyper white? Im swapping mine out but there is blue coating on the 4x4 lettering and cant figure out a good way to get this blue coating off. I ve already broke the auto/4wd button and luckily found a replacement at the junk yard but I can really afford to test any more ways out because they just had the one extra auto/4wd button, the 2HI, 4HI, and 4LO was missing. Thanks for looking and your comments.

 

[vatahoelt]

I know there are posts on this but has anyone swapped out all LEd lights in their gauges, HAVOC controls, and all the instrument lights in general so that they apear hyper white? Im swapping mine out but there is blue coating on the 4x4 lettering and cant figure out a good way to get this blue coating off. I ve already broke the auto/4wd button and luckily found a replacement at the junk yard but I can really afford to test any more ways out because they just had the one extra auto/4wd button, the 2HI, 4HI, and 4LO was missing. Thanks for looking and your comments.

what year is your truck? i didn't notice any blue coating on the switches i took apart.

 

[NOPROBROBB]

its a 2002, the coating is on the back side of the buttons that are labeled auto/4wd, 2 hi, 4 hi, and 4lo. Everything else has has a blue coating over the bulb so far but i havent did the fog light button/rear wiper box and the ac and heat controls.

 

[vatahoelt]

its a 2002, the coating is on the back side of the buttons that are labeled auto/4wd, 2 hi, 4 hi, and 4lo. Everything else has has a blue coating over the bulb so far but i havent did the fog light button/rear wiper box and the ac and heat controls.

maybe using an exacto knife, you could see if you can scrap the coating off???

 

[NOPROBROBB]

alrighty, thanks. Im really jealous yours didnt have the blue coating on. Do you have all white interior lights? Or what color did you do yours?

 

[vatahoelt]

alrighty, thanks. Im really jealous yours didnt have the blue coating on. Do you have all white interior lights? Or what color did you do yours?

to be honest, i didn't look to see if there was a blue coating, but then again there wasn't anything about them that caught my eye. but i ended up going with blue leds. although i'm debating about maybe using white ones for the seat warmer switches and the homelink buttons. and possibly switching out the orange leds in the hvac and 4x4 switch with green or some other color.

 

[NOPROBROBB]

Sweet, thanks for your input, is there any advice you can share doing this, i ve never soldered before this. But i ve got to say i feel alot better soldering now than when i was working on my first one of this project

 

[diffrnt]

Dude, I have an 02 also and found out about the blue coating. I started out using super white leds and got to that same point and found the blue coatings. So at that point I decided to make the dash blue and the window switches white. If you can figured out how to get the blue off without damaging the buttons, please let me know.

 

[NOPROBROBB]

Dude, I have an 02 also and found out about the blue coating. I started out using super white leds and got to that same point and found the blue coatings. So at that point I decided to make the dash blue and the window switches white. If you can figured out how to get the blue off without damaging the buttons, please let me know.

LOL, that made me laugh, i bet you were thinking WTF when you hit the 4x4 buttons, i know i was. I got one extra button from the junk yard, im going to try scraping that and see how it looks, but im working on my ac lights right now.

If that doesnt work though then i was thinking of doing exactly what you just mentioned

 

[vatahoelt]

Sweet, thanks for your input, is there any advice you can share doing this, i ve never soldered before this. But i ve got to say i feel alot better soldering now than when i was working on my first one of this project

the biggest problems i had were finding a good spot to put the resistor and making sure that the + lead from the led didn't touch the wiring before the resistor. had that happen on an a/c light and the led burnt out.

hit me up with any questions. i started out a little unsure, but i'm now pretty comfortable with the soldering and taking apart the switches. the overhead rear a/c switch was a pain, because of the way it was wired. took me a little longer to figure it out.

 

[diffrnt]

Here is what I did on the AC controls (front and rear). I bought a $6test light from Walmart that lights red on + and green on -. I took the AC boxes apart, plug them back in apart and probe each light to mark the + side. After that, I took the AC controls out, desoldered the old bulbs and soldered in the leds. Made things alot easier for me, at least.

 

[NOPROBROBB]

Sounds better than my set up, irigged a tester LED dealio and have been using that to figure out positive and neg. Have you did the rear window/fog light box yet? Im having a hard time figuring out how to get the fog light button out to get to that bottom light.

And still no luck on figuring a way to get them all white, i really wanted the white lighting but i dont see any options right now so im doing blue and i guess if i find something out in the future ill tear it all apart again

 

[vatahoelt]

Sounds better than my set up, irigged a tester LED dealio and have been using that to figure out positive and neg. Have you did the rear window/fog light box yet? Im having a hard time figuring out how to get the fog light button out to get to that bottom light.

And still no luck on figuring a way to get them all white, i really wanted the white lighting but i dont see any options right now so im doing blue and i guess if i find something out in the future ill tear it all apart again

i did the foglight/rear wiper switch, but i shorted it out when i plugged it in to check for polarity, so i have another one on the way.

but to get the foglight button out, you have to take a small screwdriver and pry the sides out a little bit. it's held in by small tabs on the side.

 

[NOPROBROBB]

Thanks for the help on that, it slid right out! Thats a bummer about it shorting out. I have no idea what im doing, im amazed i havnt broke more than i have already. I think i shorted out or messed something up on my arm rest rear view mirror d-pad, they wont work at all. On the plus side i did get all my dash lights finshed up now, what a time consuming project. I still got all the over head stuff to do and the arm rest controls for driver and passenger. I got the two rear seat window switches done though.

 

[vatahoelt]

Thanks for the help on that, it slid right out! Thats a bummer about it shorting out. I have no idea what im doing, im amazed i havnt broke more than i have already. I think i shorted out or messed something up on my arm rest rear view mirror d-pad, they wont work at all. On the plus side i did get all my dash lights finshed up now, what a time consuming project. I still got all the over head stuff to do and the arm rest controls for driver and passenger. I got the two rear seat window switches done though.

glad you got it out.

yeah, i started with the rear switches, since those are the easiest.

i was tempted to do the stock radio, but i didn't want to use all those leds for it since i'm debating on replacing it anyways.

the big task will be doing the guage cluster along with a new stepper motor for the trans temp.

 

[NOPROBROBB]

the gauge lights werent bad, i bought some plug and play LED and some adapters from one of the website that is floating around on this website. Cost a couple bucks per light but it was pretty easy install. Have you done the armrest controls yet?

 

[vatahoelt]

the gauge lights werent bad, i bought some plug and play LED and some adapters from one of the website that is floating around on this website. Cost a couple bucks per light but it was pretty easy install. Have you done the armrest controls yet?

did the driver's side. didn't realize that you had to take the door panel off to get it out and ended up breaking the screw bracket on the front. haven't gotten around to doing the passenger side yet.

mine's an 04, so now plug and play bulbs for me.