swap the red light

by Mike Tennese

Ok, first thing you need to do is take out the intrument cluster. To do that, you need to remove your light switch and heated seat controls. Once removed, there should be a screw both of them. Take out these screws and then you can remove the black surround from around the gauge cluster. After you have that out, you should see 2 screws, one on either side of the gauges, undo those and you should be able to pull out the cluster. Dont forget to undo the wiring harnesses on the back of the cluster. Ok, so you have the cluster out. On the top of the cluster, you should see a long white thing. Thats the reflector assembly, thats where the bulbs that light up the gauges are. Now this takes some prying, but you can pull back the white reflector. It sould stay held to the gauge assembly by the 2 metal contacts. Now, here you can do one of 2 things, you can replace the green film over the bulbs with some other colour, or you can swap the whole thing out for a neon bar like I did. My neon bar is just from one of those bass light things. All I did was remove the bulbs from the whte reflector, and hook up the neon bar to the electrical contacts for the light bulbs. You may have to trim the reflector to get the neon bar to fit in right. Now we change the colours of the little LCD screens.On the back of the cluster, you should have 8 T10 screws holding the white cover panel on. Remove those and slide the guages out. Then you can take the white plastic cover off the circuit board, it just snaps off. Now VERY (and i cant stress that enough) carefully revmove the tach and speedo needles. This can be done with needle nose plyers. Just get a good grip on the needle and pull straight up. It will be hard but they do come off. Once you have the needles off, check the back of the circuit board. There should be 8 T8 screws . Take out those screws. You should then be able to remove the guage face assembly from the ciruit board, its a little stiff coming off, but it comes off. Now if you look at the back of the face assembly, you should be able to pull out the little LCD screens for the time and odometer, they should slide right out, just be careful you dont drop them and crack them because they are glass. If pull the lillte glass LCD screen up, you should see a green cover behind it, take this out and replace it with whatever colour you want. I used red celophane wrapping I bought  from the dollar store. Use 2 layers if you want them really bright, 4 if you dont want to burn out your retinas Once you have your colours in, just reassemble the cluster the same way you took it apart. Hope this helps you guys, if you need anything else let me know!

Now the heating controls. First, take off the cover around the control knobs. It just prys off with a flathead screwdriver. Next, take out your ashtray. You should now see 6 screws, 4 around the vent controls and 2 below the ashtray. Remove the screws, then you can pull out the vent control assembly. You will see a white plastic cover on the back of the controls. Carefully pop this off and you will see the bulb that lights up the controls. There is just one and it has a green piece of plastic around it. Just pull the green peice off and replace it with something red, (I used a piece of Lego) or just paint the bulb red. After that, you can re-assemble everything.

As for the other things, like the defroster switch, you'll need some soldering skills for those. Just take out the switch, then take it apart (there is usually just a plastic cover that covers the "guts" of the switch). All you need to do here, is take out the green LED, and replace it with a red one. You can buy them at any Radio Shack. Put it back together and your done, voila, red switch!

If you need any other help on this let me know. BTW, I dont have power windowsm so I'm not sure how to change those, you might be on your own there. I assume it will be the same as the other switches though and just have a green LED in it.