Today I decided to take off the face plate of my manual A/C and scrap off the orange paint and color it blue. Well, I did it all, put it back together and you can't even see them glowing anymore. I guess the bulbs aren't bright enough to go through the sharpie. Well now I am stuck with a messed my faceplate. Is there any way to just order the faceplate for the A/C? Also, can I upgrade to Auto A/C? How can it be done? I would really like to have automatic A/C but if not I would like to just buy a new faceplate for it. Any advice would be awesome! And if anyone knows a way to make it so it lights up blue instead of orange please inform me! Because the A/C is the ONLY orange light's left in my car now and it's killing me! Thanks!

 

I imagine you could scrape off the sharpie so the paint is nonexistant, and then possible solder in some blue LED's. However I've never taken that piece apart, so I don't know how difficult that would be.

 

Gumby, ya should have asked me first :p

I used a Dremel to remove all the orange paint, and even make the little symbols below the dials light up.

BUT....

even if you strip the paint, the color is still orange cause the plastic itself is not very light "conductive", and the bulbs behind it are incandescent, creating the orange glow, without the paint. If you layer a more light restrictive color for that bulbs wavelength, blue, your going to get pretty much zero light output.

my suggestion:
get creative and wire in some superbright blue leds.

Also, switching over to manual AC "Might" require shorter bowden cables to connect to the electric "**** turner" (not in manual ac cars) that is on the left side of the center dash behind the ac controls.

I cant find the part on realoem, or any other auctions, or parts sites. Maybe im just blind.

and one more note, the automatic ac is a lot more easier to led mod.

-Ryan

 

Yeah, I used the dremel as well to get the paint off, what do you mean by the symbols behind the dials? And I think I am going to end up wiring in some LED's, I have some left over SMT LED's that I could probably wire the bulb that's in there now. It's just a pain to take the WHOLE thing out! But I am not worried about switching the Auto, it would be nice though! I know those are wayyyy eaiser to change because it's just the LED's. Any ideas would be awesome! Thanks for the feedback! Time to think!

 

symbols below the dials.

The issue here is that its going to be a S.O.B to mount the smt leds, or any other type for that matter, in a useful way. you are most likely going to get "hot spots" where the light focuses into one spot more than another, and makes the parts with the hot spot a whole lot brighter than the other parts. we could also probally get something like a 1 watt luxeon star to put in there, with a reflector sitting on top of it and pointing out toward the light pipe. This still does not resolve the issue with the plastic coloring on the actual face plate.

My car is currently in the shop for a bunch of things right now(2 fu$%ing weeks!), so i cant rightly go and rip out my control panel to come up with a solution.

 

Well I am going to take it back apart this weekend, it's just so hard to actually disconnect the entire A/C panel, and it's like 20 degree's outside lol. But I have to figure something out because it is killing me! I already took out the cigarette lighter and replaced it with a circle plexiglass with 2 usb outlets in it. I used plexiglass that way I could put a blue LED in the cup coster panel and it would make the USB ports glow blue! I got to take a picture! But like I said, I have to figure something out! Thanks for all the help and input!