black magic

Hello everyone,

I wanted to do these two mods for a while and since I recently finished my exams I've finally had the time. I couldn't find any DIY's so I decided to quickly make one.


What you'll need:

- flat head screw driver
- philips screw driver
- electrical wire
- led strips (I bought mine here: http://www.lck-led.com/p102/New-12%2...duct_info.html)
- about an hour of your time
- some patience


Climate Controls

I did this mod because the stock light doesn't match well with my Si cluster which lights up red. I couldn't live with this

1) Pop out the hazard signal and the rear defrost switches. Use a flat head screwdriver to pry them out and be careful not to wreck your dash.




2) When they are out, remove unplug the harness. You can see that there is a golden philps screw behind each switch. Take them out.





3) Remove the two golden screws under your centre panel.



4) Remove this screw in the glove box



5) Push the glove box in to bypass the rubber stopper



6) Remove the black screw at the bottom



7) Move to the other side of the dash and remove the panel under the steering wheel. There are three golden philips screws you need to remove





8) There are two additional screws on each side of the centre panel. remove them and the panel should become loose. Also unplug the cigarette lighter.



9) Remove all of the plugs for your radio/head unit and remove it completely.

10) There are 3 screws under the climate control panel you need to remove. here is one of them. The other two are closer to the front, they're tough to see.



11) This part is a little tricky. There are 4 screws (2 on each side) behind the climate control panel. Remove all 4.

12) Remove the centre console. there are a few clips so you'll have to CAREFULLY pry it out



13.1) These are the 4 screws i was referring to in step 11.



13.2) Remove both ***** for the climate control



14) Turn the climate control upside down and remove these three golden philips screws



15) Carefully pop off the black plastic cover plate



16) Pull out the stock bulbs



17) Cut off one of the bulbs (as close to the bulb as you can get)



18) Strip the wire. You need to be very careful and get it right the first time since the wire is extremely short



19) Take out your LED strip and cut one end off so it fits



20) Use some electrical wire to connect the led strip to the wires you stripped in step 18 (you'll have to use tiral and error to figure out which one is positive and negative)



21) Test your led strip to make sure it works before you put everything back together. Make sure its plugged in! I forgot to plug it in (I don't know why i even unplugged it in the first place), and when i turned on my headlights and it wasn't working I was all like "WTF".



22) Put everything back follow the instructions backwards



23) DONE!













Brake Light

The only reason I even did this simple mod was b/c I have to remove my stock brake light to mount my subs. I think its illegal not to have one, so I did this in case.


1) Remove the rear panel. Mine was already off because I'm working on mounting my subs back there. Its pretty easy to take off. There's the child seat hinge that you need to remove with a socket wrench and then the rest are just clips that need to be popped out.


2) Remove the stock brake light


3) You can see the harness of the brake light in this pic



4) Strip the wires from the LED strip and the wire that you'll need to connect the led strip to the brake light harness





5) Simply mount the led strip where ever you want using the provided mounting clips. Since my subs will be taking up pretty much all the room on the panel, I mounted my led strip on the top of the windshield



6) Connect the wires into the harness





7) Test to make sure the led strip lights up when you apply the brake. If it does hide the wiring from the LED strip to the brake light harness.





8) Replace your rear panel

9) DONE!











I also ended up replacing my dome light with an LED one:






All in all, I'm pleased with the way both mods came out - as simple as they may be. The brake light looks a little shitty, but oh well. I might make a small panel for it or something later on. I'm also gonna have to put LED's in my cluster too because now the climate control is brighter. I hope this DIY is of use to a curious mind out there!


Modified by black magic at 9:44 PM 8/20/2008

CarbonizedDX

Good right up, on mine I had to detach the temp selector cable from the lower passenger footwell to get it loose but either way works. On mine I opted to get thin flex strip led's from Oznium that looked like this:

These allowed me to tuck the strip behind the light pipes as well as I had enough extra (I think I ordered a 12" strip) to cut the extra and then have it firing down to have the sliders glow:




The only thing I'd suggest for your rear brake light would be to place a little strip of black plastic or stiff paper board under it so that it doesn't fill the rear of the cabin with red when you brake....


Modified by CarbonizedDX at 11:48 AM 8/21/2008

black magic

Thats a good idea. Thanks!

JSPECSIR

i used those same strips from oznium for my cluster and climate controls.
did you use their 194 replacement for you auto meters?

the slow and the serious

good stuff..i plan on doin this to match my si cluster also

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

now the big question is... does the dimmer still work? I have my dimmer turned down about halfway. I can't stand even regular 194 amber bulbs in my gauge cluster to be full brightness at night.

black magic

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PatrickGSR94 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">now the big question is... does the dimmer still work? I have my dimmer turned down about halfway. I can't stand even regular 194 amber bulbs in my gauge cluster to be full brightness at night.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yep, dimmer still works. But to be honest, its still pretty well lit when the dimmer is even all the way down. I like it this way, though

CarbonizedDX

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JSPECSIR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i used those same strips from oznium for my cluster and climate controls.
did you use their 194 replacement for you auto meters?</TD></TR></TABLE>


In that picture I'm acutally using the high watt single chip led units:

I got mine off ebay but the same product....

And Yes the dimmer still work, the cluster is Ground dimming, so as long as you use the factory wiring it should ground... Been told by people thiers didn't ground but I've never experianced it so I can't say for sure...