Was tired of the stock look so i did something about it. I started about a week ago and took my time. I bought leds from ebay and went to work. For about $5 i got 20 led's,told them they were for my car and they sent free resistors. I used blue 3mm leds for everything except the guages where i used 5mm white. The process was not hard at all just a little time consuming. A lot of customization was needed so they came out a little different than the 4th gen interior led pixs thread. I do recomend this thread it helped on every mod!!! As long as you can solder you an do this just read the thread. All thats left is to figure out why my climates dont work and were good. As you can see i broke my plastic lense when i first put the brushed aluminum background on & sorry pix are blury

 

I see a few hot spots (hard to avoid really) but it looks nice overall mate! I like the color .... I did mine in blue with 5mm LEDs. Still need to do my cluster tho ... drivin me nutzo to not have it done, just no time at the moment

 

that looks nice. I wish I could do it but I have no knowledge of soldering or anything related to that.

 

More than a few hot spots but thanks. You only need one day for the cluster like 5 hrs if you dont stop and i used double sided 3m tape to secure inside as well as glue. The best way i found was to drill two holes for each lead through some of the plastic supports and mount the leds rigth to the housing.

 

cool .... you could also use 194's in place of the 5 that are in there too. The hot spots could possibly be cleaned up with a deflector of sorts. (what I mean is ... have the LED shine onto a backboard that dispersses the light as to not create a single point of light - thus eliminating the hot spots) dunno if it'd look any good or not ... but I will try with mine when I get time.

 

How Many LED's did you use for the Gauges? Just one in each spot where the old bulbs used to be? or custom positioning.

Also How did you get the window switches so well aimed, and so bright? , Mine are good, just not very bright and the lock/unlock button is bearly visible

 

nice job man how did you do the window switches if you don't mind me asking

 

damn. . look nice. . i wish i got the time for all that ..

 

i soldered 2 leds for the outside two 194 holders and kept them pluged in i then places 2 sets of 2 leds for each large guage and one led each for the little guages. so there and the two 194 leds that i started with shining for both the large and amall guages 10 5mm in total. The door were just swaped with the stock i might have soldered them higher than the stock led was. I just cut and replaced except on the driverds lights. I replaced each resistor and led on the stock circuit board. I found it easer and less riskier to not mess with the circuit board unless it was absolutely necessary. The passenger doors were a pain b/c i made a place for the resistor to sit in the plastic led housing. FUN

 

Wow those are bright! Pretty cool.

 

Nice job. Do you know the brightness of the LEDs you bought (mcd)? Just curious

 

Nice, I like it alot. I need to do my white guages...

 

blue 3500mcd 3mm &
white 12000mcd 5mm

 

you didn't need resistors for the window switches (looks like you used them)

 

ya i used them for every single led i installed i tried on the first switch i installed and they worked for an hour so i didnt stop using them. I read that you didnt nead to use them in certain places but with more resistance they would just burn dimmer and aparentlt thats not an issue, but thanks

 

Azn .... can you get a better pic of the window switch? not tryin to jack ur thread mate, but .... I am at a loss as to how they are different.

For the LEDs and the resistors ... I used a VOM to test to see if I needed on or not. Not gonna hurt that you used them at all, just may make them a bit dimmer - but ... NOT from the looks of it.

 

Yeah definatly, I want you to understand.

Edited the picture...sent you a PM (JtzMax)

 

Looks a little Hot /b Good job

 

yea i love the doors. the guages bright spots bother me tho. theres no way to diffuse light right off the top of the LED?

 

nice job, i'll have to post some of my led pics too. I use PCB board from radioshack to mount my leds, it's expensive but makes things easier. You should also do the ignition keyhole if you haven't already.

 

I did the ignition keyhole to blue; pretty cool. I cut the other side of the ring to add another LED so it's a bit more even around it.

 

I did the same with the key hole. I can dim the lights still with the interior dimmer so the glair i get on the windshield at night is dealable.

 

I didnt polish any of the leds in the guages so the lights are shining straight at the guages if you polish them then you could help the bright spots

 

Did you sand your LEDs? I sanded mine with 800 or 400(dont recall). It diffused them a LOT in the climate control. Made them softer and more subtle than as bright and obnoxious.

 

come to delaware and do that to my max

 

Uhh.. don't the resistors make them last longer?

 

if LEDs where already there you don't need resistors only if your going from regular bulbs to LEDs. Here is a good link for a write-up, I used his to do mine.

http://petah.org/maxima/maxima.htm

 

man, i really want to do this....but...i suck

will 194 LED bulbs fit where the regular bulbs fit? all the ones ive seen look too big for the 'socket' (i guess thats what it would be), like they wont fit back in the hole

 

That's gorgeous. That might be a project for me next summer! Best pics of an interior lighting mod I've seen yet. In places that are designed to take an incandescent bulb though, I'd be much happier if there was just an LED bulb that could be dropped in without messing with the enclosure.

 

that would be awsome to find bright *** replacement 194 led's all the ones ive seen are dim and poorly made (autozone). i just soldered the leds to the stock sockets in most cases and screwed them back in.
i wasnt sure if the stock resistors were strong enough for the new led's and they didnt hurt, so use them if you want.

 

Looks great, nice and bright. Reminds me of some sort of space ship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

You need to drill the hole in 97+. Since they don't take 194 bulbs in the cluster but they will fit.

 

Look awesome, i wish I could do that to mine, but I dont wanna mess with my cluster n soldering.

 

I did it the easest way i think. By cutting the old led's out above the plastic piece i wasnt soldering anywhere near anything imprtant. This way if i messed up or sliped i wouldnt break anything. In some spots i just droped the solder on the wire and then put it in to olace. The solder is still maluable for a few seconds after leaving the gun. I also didnt solder the correct way eather your supposed to heat up the object your soldering untill its hot enough to melt the solder. I just tuched the solder pen right to the solder and painted with it.

 

just to throw it out there I used a belt sander and sanded the led flat to about 1mm above the silicon inside the led. I placed these in the window switches and no hot spots could be seen. I know it'd take a while to hand sand it but it's worth it

also, i just wrecked the flat led that's in the rear window switches so that it didn't glow green or turn on at all. Did you do these? I found it'd be close to impossible without a solder sucker.

 

Two things: Gun is hotter than iron(Unless you have a pro one), so for larger amount of solder, it is much easier. I perfer an iron because I have great eyes and love small, strong connections. Two, yeah, that way is wrong, but Ive done more soldering jobs than I can count, and most of the time I do it that way. The "right" way poses risk to damage components(even with proper cooling clamps, etc...) and its quicker.

^^shissqbob: A dremel would work wonders on that also if belt sander isnt available.

 

I tried to do this on the gauge of my new 98 GLE. But it turned out they are 74s, which are smaller in size and hard to arrange the R and LED. So I turned to mod the climate control instead.

 

yeah as I stated before...194 bulbs were 95-96. 74 bulbs are used in the 97-99 gauges.

 

oh snap, Cdg2125, i should have mentioned before that my cluster was swapped before i bought the car, so it may very well be a 95-96 cluster. It has 194 bulbs in it. So my question still stands....the LED bulbs that i find in an auto parts store will fit in the hole?

 

can you even have hot spots in the window switches?

the rear switches were as easy as the fronts to me...same thing as the passenger side.. and to the OP yeah you didnt need the resistor for the window switches as someone else said.