The Chris N Nick Blog: 1G interior switches, Part 1

this is our how-to on making our cars interior blue.

things you will need:

1. soldering iron. (i used both a radio-shack 15W and 40W to do the job, if you're unexperienced with soldering, use a 15W, it'll take longer, but less risk of making a mess and ruining the switches)

2. Hot glue gun.

3. Shrink-wrap or heat-shrink. i guess not totally necessary, but keeps longer leads from shorting. you can use hot glue, but the heat shrink's less messy.

PART 1: HVAC PANEL

1. HVAC panel itself. Unscrew it. there's 4 screws that hold it down.


here's the back of the HVAC panel with the bulbs out. the bulbs just twist out. now you can see why they glow orangey....


one of them done. note the bottom rail is your 12V, top rail is ground. toss a little bit of glue over the exposed leads to keep them from shorting on something.


just a completed pic.

2. Defrost Switch. just use 2 flat headed screwdrivers to separate the switch. I broke my switch in the front, so I only wired up the bottom light (which is or the switch itself, the top light is for when the defroster is actually on)


This is the switch apart. make sure not to lose that little metal ball.


to do this, i first took the bulbs out and bent the leads out of the way. then I took a soldering iron and melted a hole to stick the LED's leads into.


that's the ground. just solder the shorter leg of the LED right to that metal.


that's how I did the power side. fits in nicely.


everything hot glued, to make sure nothing's gonna touch.


3. Rear Window Switch. take the switch apart, don't lose the springs.


I made a sharpie mark on the bottom to indicate the 12V side


Just a quick pic of how I did mine.... don't bend the hell out of those switch leads, they keep the mechanism working. also, use a low power iron on this because it's easy to melt the plastic underneath. i did, luckily the switch still works.