So took my gauges out/apart today, and am probably going to change some colors around, get rid of the orang, probably do white instead or dark evil looking red would be fun...

How the heck do you get to some of those SMD PLCC leds... I can probably get to all of the Multi function display part without taking the LCD display out, but underneath the gauges, might have to disassemble and desolder a bunch of things. Anyone who has done this have some tips? If my count is correct, there are 6 SMD PLCC LEds for the backlight, 5 SMD PLCC leds for the tach with 1 being for the redline, one SMDPLCC LED for the temp gauge, and 6 assorted 5mm LEDs for the various icons which I'll probably leave alone.

 

i dont get it, need more pictures [:'(]

if you know what your doing, rock on. get some after pics

 

Yes, I know what I'm doing, I just was hoping there was an easier way which I was missing. Basically those little white rectangles on the PCB of the gauges, you desolder those and replace with various colors. However... some as you can see are way under there, and hoping someone who has doen this could say "oh yeah pop this clip and that clip and whala"

How does the needle come off? Just pry? I pulled pretty decent and didn't want to come... just need some more force?

 

ill be workin on my gauges pretty soon too... i still need to take mine apart and get a good look at it


theres a blue gauges thread in the tech articles that has a link to a wesite for the SMD leds

i still need to order my leds, cuz once i get stuff apart i dont like to stop till im done... "seems" fairly simple

 

If you're just looking for blue, the cheapest place I have found them is the electronic goldmine, a surplus store:

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.co...?number=G13706

or white:

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.co...?number=G16010


The type of SMD LED you are looking for is the PLCC kind... any other SMD will be waaaayyyy too small.

Well, I haven't taken a crack at it yet, and if you've done SMD soldering even a little bit before it won't be a big deal if you have a soldering iron with a very thin tip which you can get into the very tight places. As the pics show, some of them are way the F in there, and I couldn't see any easy way of removing the gauges or the LCD without doing a ton of desoldering.

Sometimes the LEDs are glued to the PCB, so even if you get them desoldered, they stick like crazy and you kinda have to demolish them to get them off. But if they aren't glued on, then you can just heat up one side, push it up on to it's side, and then heat the other side and plop it off... forceps and/or very small tweezers wouldn't be a bad idea. a low wattage heating iron is important especially for white LEDs, if you heat them up for too long the yellow phosphor turns a greenish...

THe other place to get them is lc-led

http://lc-led.com/Products/department/5

Here is a cluster of those LEDs I did for a backlight.

 

thanks for the links and yeh ive done quite a few circuit board soldering

it takes some practice if you havent done it before, but once u learn the tricks its just tedious

 

Sorry, I can't help.

I will just be sending mine to Bluegauges.com

I have heard their customer service is excellent.

I am pretty good at soldering cuircuit boards, but I really don't want to mess with surface mounts on a part as expensive as a gauge cluster (and I even have a spare).

 

I just finished this, and I did have to desolder all the LCD boards, was quite a pain in the ***, everything sorta went ok, some of the numbers for the time are wrong, so I'm going to have to check the pins again, make sure I didn't cross any... it's a heck of a job to do this...