I've been seeing a lot of posts about changing out clusters and needles and what not. I'm on an LED binge and was wondering how hard it is to remove the cluster and get it put back in the same way it came out, except with new blue LEDs to light everything up.

Also, does anyone know if it's possible to change the horrible green color behind all the dash switches like the ac controls, reverse sensor button, Windows switches. I want to change every single light in my dash and everything that lights up OEM green, and switch them to blue LEDs. Is it possible?

 

I would also love to see this for myself!

 

I put a blue led in the spot for my shifter since it was burnt out. It looks awesome and I also want to just pull out the bulbs on my gauges and replace with an led.

 

I would say unless you are moderately experienced with soldering surface mount pieces on PCB's then I would avoid this project. Most LED's under buttons and the dash are surface mount components making it fairly difficult to change.

I believe they are this package size.


As far as lights behind your cluster that becomes even more difficult. Your cluster has a green coating on the back that you must remove first. Then you must either create a new lighting plane so you can spread the new LED's out so they are not spotty or replace lights and have bad hot spots in your cluster.

All in all I would say the project is for a fairly experience person with electronics and soldering. Maybe others would disagree or chime in.

 

I did some research last night on it. The cluster itself seems rather easy to get out of the dash. Then process of taking it apart looks like it's the hardest challenge, especially when taking off the needles to revel the back side with the green tint. That's about as much as I know from doing the research last night.

What I'd like to know is there are factory bulbs in the cluster itself. It almost looked like the bulbs in the map light of my 06 Fx4. I guess some people have just replaced these bulbs with LEDs and scratched the green tint off, and put it back together and revealed blind spots?

I don't know, but I'm going to continue to do research until I figure it out. All I do known is, this forum and the F150online forum have over a gazillion threads, and no one has done a step by step write up on how to do this. To me, this is probably the coolest looking interior mod that probably 95% of F150 owners have no idea how to do. I would think someone would do a COMPLETE write up and video tutorial, especially if they are so electronically inclined, you know they have a video camera.

 

How hard was bit to put the Blue led in the shifter? Do you mind taking some pictures.

 

Simple as changing the light bulb out. Look for the numerous threads on how to change the bulb out and just replace with a 194 blue led. The green adds a neat tint to it. I wouldn't think you would have to scrape the green tint off your gauges....

Here's a link... http://www.f150online.com/forums/int...b-removal.html

Takes 2 min.. I really don't think that you HAVE to remove the green tint. That if of my shifter still has it on and I like the color with the blue....

 

So the shifter has the same green tint underneath it?

 

Yeah with a regular bulb it looks like this

 

I would imagine that the cluster is tinted the same as the shifter. I can't see it taking an electronics wizard to change bulbs in the cluster to get the color effect you want.