Hey folks,

Hoping someone knows of a guide (preferably with pics, but without is still all good) on how to deal with non-working backlights for the climate control buttons... Mine have always worked perfectly (bar the red and blue up arrow/down arrow buttons which from time to time wouldnt work.. if i flicked the button area with my finger nail they'd often come back on.. loose connection there?) but yeah all the others have mostly dropped out, slight haze of green light over the "auto" and "econ" buttons but nowhere near as bright as before...

I tried to do a search here but unfortunately am limited in my ability to do so due to the status of my account.

I should be able to remove the unit just fine (i'm guessing its just attached my a wiring harness or two back there?) .. but err, in terms of replacing the bulbs.. is this even possible? and what type of globes do they use? heres hoping they dont have to be soldered as my soldering skills suck at the best of times :S

Ideally a guide would be awesome.. i'd like to even possibly choose my own bulb colours if possible but that might be asking too much.

Thanks for any help some of you may have on this one.. really appreciate it folks.

 

Here you go...click and read.

 

Very swish! Thanks a bunch for the linky.

I'm a little concerned however as to how difficult it will be to source replacement bulbs for the unit? I'd go by the part #s mentioned in that thread however I am situated in Melbourne/Australia... No doubt if i go straight to Nissan they'll just quote me on a new climate control unit ($2,000AUD later or something stupid) .... are these a "common" type of bulb? They look to be an oddly designed one that locks into place with a quarter to half turn by a screwdriver, is that right?

 

the bulb is basically a 3mm bulb with 2 wires comming out of it. It is not an LED though, as the wires can be arranged on either end of that little plastic screw in connector piece. While Michael's link shows the ACC, the Manual Climate Control is arranged differently. With the entire face (besides buttons) are lit up by 2 lights and a clear light distribution piece. This piece works similar to fiber-optics, where the light is dispersed throughout the plastic and is emmited out of any flat part of the piece. More than likely, one of your bulbs went out, which is why you still see light, but it is not close to as bright as before, or only one half of your display is lit.

When I did my LED interior conversion, I took out my climate control by unhooking the black and blue cables that are connected to the "Heated air" switch, and the temperature switch. After that, it is simply held on by a few harnesses.

If you can find the bulbs, then just use a screwdriver to take out the plastic retainer/bulb assembly and wire in a new bulb by using another as a model. It's kind of tricky, but not if you have something to look at. The wires being wrapped around the plastic retainer is what gives them a connection to the circuit board, so you have to make sure you do it right.

If you can't find the bulbs (More than likely), you can just get some 5mm WIDE ANGLE leds. Try to find the widest distribution angle possible, because this is the only way to ensure that your entire display face is lit up. you will have to use some 470 ohm resistors as well. Solder the resistor to the LEd...keeping it as short as possible. Then you'll have to use a DMM to find out which connection on the circuit board is positive and negative, to solder the LED to accordingly. The Resistor end should be soldered to negative, I believe. Either way, if you have it wrong the led won't work. Bend the led wires at a right angle just before the led, to face it towards the display face. This is where wide angle comes into play, because otherwise, you will only have a small spot of focused light. Not good. You will also notice that the clear light distribution piece mentioned before has two small areas in it right where the led's will be. You have to make sure that the LEDs are short enough that you can put the unit back together and have them not touch those areas, because they aid with light distrubution.

That will pretty much do it for the display face....if you desire in changing the lights behind your buttons as well it's a whole different story. You'll have to do a lot of soldering and have some patience. You'll also have to pull the circuit board out of the unit, unsolder the black LED holder from the board, take out the green square LEDs, and substitute your own color led's. You can make them any color you want, as long as they're 3mm led's, and you be sure to remember the order of positive and negative on the board. Since there were led's there in the first place, resistors will not be needed.....

Thats pretty much how to totally customize your Climate control unit....any other questions let me know~!

 

and that is why I showed him the link...he has ACC .

CBRKelly you can buy replacement bulbs from Nissan. I bought some several years ago for my old Altima. They were the exact same bulb though. They dont sell just the bulb but the bulb in the little plastic holder together so you dont have to twist them on. I cant remeber how much they were.

 

Ahh...i was wondering where my "econ" button was. LOL! Well, either way the info I posted might be of help to someone out there. Even if it doesnt help him remove and find the LED's, it still has the same instructions for changing the bulbs to LED's. I know that when I was doing my LED swap, I couldn't find direct instructions on how to swap the climate control LED's. Thanks to some help from you, and a willingness to take apart my climate controll while running the risk of ruining it forever, I had to figure it all out pretty much by myself. Thanks again Michael

 

I replaced the bulbs in mine & they are just a basic bulb that I got from a
local auto parts store. On a scale of 1 - 10 10 being the hardest this would be about a 4.