Performed on an 05 F150 XLT

As some of you may have read the window and lock switches have surface mounted LED's that you could order and resolder blue ones in place of the green LED's. Yeah well that process is a nightmare considering you have to separate the power prongs and once your done you pray you can seat the board back on the prongs and spread the prongs wide enough that they make full contact back on the board leads. You confused yet? You should be and it's a pain.


Picture of the boards with LEDs in all your switches.


Now you notice the LED on the left side. That is a 0805 SMD which I found a few people on this forum say to use. THIS IS WRONG! The correct sizes should you choose to replace the SMD LEDs are 1206 SMD. The 0805 are way to small.


OK so moving on....You don't want to mess with those small *** LEDs? I don't blame you and this is what I did instead which worked out perfect.

Supplies needed:
[1] 3mm (Color of your choice) LEDs
[2] 470-Ohm 1/8 Watt Resistor
[3] Solder and soldering gun
[4] Patience
[5] A lot of time

The LED's I bought cost me $12.02 for Lot of 100 X 3mm Blue LED Lamps 15000mcd. Now you might want to get a lower mcd (mcd is the brightness of the LED) because I had to defuse them because they were so bright. The resistors I purchased were bought at Radio Shack for $0.99 pack of 5.

The first thing I did was take the board off the switch and destroy it, yep I said destroy it like this:


This allows you to make sure you have no short or other current that may mess the project up. Taking your soldering gun and removing all the solder is very simple.

Now after 2 hours trying to figure out the why my window switches would not work after I had done 2 door lock switches I found the positive and negative layout is different.

First is the door lock switch layout:


and the finished product:

 

Second is the window switch layout:


and the finished product:





I found this way to be very fast and if I was able to do it knowing everything I know it would probably take me 20 minutes for each switch/lock.

The master switch set on the drivers side is an easy SMD LED swap and the 1206 SMD work great. I found a guy on ebay who sells these for a good price and is in the US.
http://myworld.ebay.com/niktr0nix


Here are some night pictures:




...and just because I want to, here is my Gryphon Tuner:




Now if you happen to get bright LED's just take a little sand paper and ruff the LED head up, this defuses the brightness. If that's not enough you can take a permanent marker and under the switch cap just make a dot which will block some of the light output on the switch. If you make it to dark some finger nail polish remover and a Qtip will lighten the permanent ink.


In closing I hope I didn't confuse anyone and I apologies for my spelling errors. Now I'm off to swap my Dash lights out with my new LEDs I just got in.


Link to other photos:
http://chris-michele.com/index.php/c...itchled?page=1

 

thats awesome man

 

I messed up 5 of my switches when doing mine the lock unlock on my driver door is in and out, passenger front doors are in and out. and my rear driver side window switch wont even let me roll it down! So all the window switches in my drivers door look great!

 

Nice job, this should get moved to How To's so I can find it again quicker

 

that looks sick. good job.

 

hey thanks for the tips. Do you think it is possible that you could post a link on where you bought the LEDs. if there is to many maybe just the ones for the window switches/door locks?

 

awesome job man! did you do all the leds in your guages too? how did that go?

 

Yes I did every single light in my truck, gauges, ac, steering wheel. Those were all easy, just time consuming.

 

So what leds did you use for the gauges?