Changing the color of the Climate Control and switch back-lights
 

The back-lighting of the climate control LCD's and switches, in their stock form, are orange LED's, rather than incandescent bulbs like the dash LCD's. That will make this project much simpler as the supply voltage is already 1.5 volts, so no need for resistors. Just a matter of removing the old LED's and installing new ones. :)

I will not be doing a multi-color setup like I did with the dash lights(see here), just to keep things simple. Blue is my favorite anyway,so we're going with blue for this project. The orange and blue really clash...

EDIT: I'm considering offering a retrofit with a core exchange. The core exchange kit would include these parts with the backlight color of your choice. You could also just send me these parts for a retrofit.

Any interest?

1 down, 22 to go!

Hehe!;)

All 23 replaced...

Yowza! Thats bright!

Also a side by side of the old vs new...old on the right, new on left. The new leds are only about 1/4 the size...tiny!

I tested it with the LCD in place before putting everything back together.

Good thing!
Not only was the readout too dim, but it was also GREEN! Sure enough, there was an orange filter back there. I tried replacing it with a piece of white copy paper, but the light distribution was spotty. I found some thin "For Sale" signs with a nice unprinted white section at the Dollar store for $.75 that were perfect for a new white filter. :)

will be nice to see the finished product installed, so we just pack ours up and ship to you right???

:cheers:

And the finished product! So much better than that hideous orange and now it matches my blue dash lights!:cool:

I still need to do the switches, but I'm all soldered out for today, so will put that off for a day or two.

One final note; please do not ask for pointers on how to do this.

If you cant figure it out from the thread posts, then you really shouldn't attempt it. This is not easy. It requires some fine solder work and if you dont know what you are doing, you will destroy your climate control unit...I'll have no part in that. ;)

Haha! Wish I had it in me, but one was plenty!:eek:

One more...wide shot.

The CC unit looks slightly darker than the dash in the pic, but I cant see a difference in person. I think maybe its just the angle. Now I need to play with the stereo to get it matched up. :p

I might still change the rotary gauges out as well, but not sure yet. I don't really mind them being white. :)

That is so nice looking!

Great Job :cheers:

Very nice ! I'll send you mine to do !!

Thank you both! :)

I went ahead and did the switches. It only took a few minutes and I didn't want to put it off, so here's one last picture. Sorry for the blur...my phone camera is not so great. :o
Crap! Still gotta do the cigarette lighter socket! Oh, well...one more to go.

Side note; my brain is fried! :(

Daylight shots.

Haha! It never ends! :)

I did the cigarette lighter socket, along with the window switches and "ashtray"(actually an ipod cubby) a few days ago, then took it for a night drive, content that all was well...NO!

I forgot the headlight switch! :(

Did that today using white for the icons and blue for the "dot".

Done!

Hmmm...I guess I forgot to update this. Did my rotary gauges as well with LEDs from porscheleds.com. All blue now ;)

Looks really nice! Soldering is fun. I would say you could also have just saved yourself a lot of time and bought a speed yellow car. :) :) :)

Hi @particlewave,

NOW you are living up to your name! Gonna change it now to Blue particlewave?

The Blue LEDs REALLY look good! I have switched out my doors and dome, thought about this…how many IN TOTAL LEDs did you use? How much time/money did it take? Were there any other problems you encountered?

Good Job!

Man oh man, those are awesome. Compartively to sodering two wires together, how hard is this to do?

I've never soldered on a circuit board and it would make me pretty nervous!

Thanks for the compliments ;)
Here's a rundown;

LEDs-
23 micro surface mount for the climate control unit
10 micro surface mount for all rocker switches(2 each)
5 small standard for the head light switch
2 large for the power outlet and "ashtray"(1 each)-these also require a resistor to drop the voltage from 12v to 3v.

The climate control and switch LEDs are pretty darn small, so a steady hand is a must. Check the orientation of the LEDs first and use a black sharpie to put a dot on the negative terminal of each(on the board). This will make things go faster ;)
I think that I spent about 2 hours on the CC unit, which was the most work of course.
All in all, I'd say that I spent 4-5 hours on the whole project, though its hard to say for sure since it was spread out over several days.
The instrument cluster LEDs all came from porscheleds.com and took only a few minutes to swap out as the are just plug-and-play.

1-10, 10 being the most difficult, I'd rate the whole project a 5, but that is dependent upon the skill level of the individual.

Pwave, It looks so much better than stock it's dramatic! As for your comments on soldering, I've had to do it on a few boards before with only about a 50% success rate. Your caution should be well heeded, it's not like joining two wires. If you overheat it and some other solder on the board runs, that is truly where the new cusswords are created.

Can't find the website
 

pwave, That dash looks awesome.

I would ask you to make one, but I've found that half the fun of the Box is learning new things. I've had some, but limited, experience with LED on PCB, so I think I'll tear apart a boom box or something to practice on. I looked for porscheleds.com, but get an error. Do you have an alternate address?

The sites I did find list voltage as 3.0-3.5VDC, but you said the CC is 1.5VDC. Am I looking at the correct LEDs, or will 3V ones work? These won't need a resistor, but the speedo/tach are 12V, so they will, correct?

Thanks for the supplies breakdown. Do you also have a breakdown for the rotary guages?

This is the same website everyone uses, they must have changed their name.

http://www.sportscarleds.com/

I recommend these LEDs.
They are rated at 3v-3.4v, but are plenty bright on the 1.5v board supply, as can be seen in my pictures ;)

If you order the dash led kit from the link that Brad provided above(formerly porscheleds.com), they come with the resistor built in. If you decide to make your own you will need resistors. Likewise, any LED powered off of 12 V(Cigarette lighter, ashtray) will need a resistor. You can use an online LED resistor calculator to determine what resistance you need for each LED.

I just did my climate control and two of the switches. I now know what you mean about your brain being fried. I didn't think the replacements would be quite as frustratingly small as they are, but eventually you get a rhythm going and it's not that difficult. I tested each one with my DMM set to diode, putting the probes not on the LED itself or the new solder, but in the vias on the same tracer (to ensure new solder was in fact making contact with the LED and pad). I could also double check polarity this way. I'm proud to say I was 23 for 23. The switches also went without a hitch. Hopefully tonight I will get a chance to reinstall everything and see how it looks.

I had initially thought that if I were to do this project again I might order 5050 LED's, which are the what is originally on the board. In retrospect, they might be quite a bit more difficult to solder because of how much they overlap the pad.

I also found a "For Sale" sign in the discount bin at the grocery store and made the diffuser.

What did you end up doing for the cigarette lighter? I finally figured out how to get the bulb holder apart for it and I see a few that should work on superbrightleds.com. Is that the only oddball, and the others (besides the gauges) are the 0603's?

After hooking everything back up last night, I was disappointed. The entire display was very dim as well as the buttons. It was difficult to tell that the buttons were even on, but they were. If I turned on the heated mirrors or central lock, the display "dot" light up well, but the rest was not good. Perhaps you used these?

Unique Leds 0603 Surface Mount Led - Blue 380mcd Max

They are the same size, but 3-4 times brighter than the ones you linked to.

I am very sorry...I did link the wrong ones. I used the 250-380mcd LEDs.
Yikes. My apologies. :( That's a lot of work to do twice, but at least they're cheap. I'll fix the link.

The headlight switch requires small standard(non-surface mount) LEDs as the are soldered to the rear of the board, not the surface. I had some in the parts bin that I used and don't have a part # for those, but any small 200-400mcd led would work. For the "ashtray" and lighter, I just picked up some full size LEDs from radio shack. On the lighter socket, I just removed all of the stock light hardware and directly soldered the negative leg of the led to the metal of the socket so that I could aim it at the diffuser and adjust it for optimum even light distribution. I'll see if I can get a picture soon.

No worries, man. It took me less than an hour to do the first time and I'm actually an electronics engineer, so I've got all the right tools to do it. I wouldn't mind seeing the lighter socket setup you have.

Here are some pictures of the lighter socket LED. I wasn't super happy with my approach here. I'm sure I could've designed something much better looking, but I figured that it wouldn't be seen anyway and this was an efficient way of mounting, powering, and aligning the LED for optimal light distribution in the diffuser ring. The resistor is on the negative leg under the heat shrink.

http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/a...88576C6894.jpg

http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/a...885F60C0F6.jpg

Looks awesome

Thanks Henkel ;)

It's definitely better than orange and well worth the effort. :)

Any tips on getting to the LED on the intermittent wiper dial? I got the back off, but it looks like I would have to destroy the thing to get to the LED.

Hmmm...I don't have one of those :(

You have me sold. I just got the kit for my dash from sportscarLEDs.com, the surface mount LEDs from the link you provided and a new climate control module from ebay.

Porsche Boxster, Carrera 996/997 LCD Replacement Repair Kit for Climate Control
Item# 200926743312

I needed just a LCD as mine leaked its liquid. But I found the whole module for $75 so now I have a test-bed for the soldering.

:dance:

I just did mine a few weeks ago. You have to pry it off, but it does come apart and go back together again.
Sorry, no pics. I'm deployed again. someday I'll be able to drive my car!

NOT for all models
 

please remove post. incorrectly placed

anyone doing this project please note: apparently '01 and later uses a different type of led for the lighted center display in the speedo. I ordered the leds to do mine, and received 5 socket-type leds. When I opened up the gauge cluster, I found an array of surface-mount LEDs, similar to the AC unit.

Sportscarleds.com sent me a pic of a gauge cluster with all blue gauges, but the center display was stock orange.

Otherwise, I HIGHLY recommend this project. Not difficult, couple hours, and an incredible improvement over the dated orange.

I looked into this once also for my 2001 and was told the same, so they have remained stock orange.

Based on complaints of quality, luminosity, and size, I am now recommending these LEDs.
They are the same size as the OEM LEDs and plenty bright.

Sorry for any confusion.

http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/a...2C6C42E1B9.jpg

I swapped out these LEDs this weekend and everything went well. The latest LEDs posted by particlewave are actually the same size as the old ones which makes life a bit easier. I am by no means an expert at soldering but I didn't find it too hard. Each LED on the board is oriented in the same way (they have a cut-out on one corner) so you can replace one and then test it before you change all of them. Getting them to stay in place while you solder them on is the hardest part. I used a small screwdriver with petroleum jelly on the tip.