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 @ss 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://www.xperties.net/photos/v/cars/f150/switchled/

 

Nice write up this should be move to the How To. Also now if you got the right size ones you just swap them out correct?

 

Nice work. I've bookmarked one from another forum for the switches in the 97-03 which I'm gonna be doing this weekend

 

Bc if i can switch them out with the right sizes in my 05 FX4 i will get red and i also have the thing on my dash which controls the brightness of the interior of the truck

EDIT: are you gonna do a write up on how to do the dash as well?

 

You see the 2 prongs on the right and one on the left. If you were to swap out the SMD LEDs with the 1206 then you would have to take a pair of plyers and close them, lift the board off the prongs and you could then get to the LEDs. The problem is when you put the board back on the prong you have to spread them wide so they make contact with the underside solder as shown in the section picture. That is very hard to do and out of 3 that I orginal tried to swap out for the same LED they worked but over a day or so the pegs weren't spread wide enough and they would lose their connection and flicker.

To me it was faster and easier to just do the 3mm LED.



Second picture, note this is the underside of the board which shows the solder points the prongs have to keep contact with.



Now the drivers controller is an easy swap with 1206 SMD because they are on top of the board and does not require you to take anything off. I did those switches in 15 mintues.


Yes, I'm taking pictures as I do the dash and once I'm done I'll post those. Also I just finished my gauges so those should be up in the next day or so.

 

ok so all the driver side needs it just the 1206 SMD LEDs and its good to go but the others its easier to do the 3mm swap?

 

Yep and if your like me with little or no experience with soldering or dealing with SMD's you'll be happier if you went with the 3mm. I spent 2 full days trying to configure every which way to get the pins to keep contact. Heck I even brought the old Dremel out and fabricated a flat head screw drive that would separate the pins with a single smack...it no worky.

Oh and so far in the last hour the headlight switch I been messing with takes Surface Mount PLCC-2 SMT LEDs. I've only been able to find those at http://www.oznium.com/plcc-2 so I'll be placing an order for some of those once I take a peek at the AC controls.

 

good write up cant wait to see the guages and dash

 

Hey XPerties-

Have you ever figure out what leds you use for the AC unit? And great write-up for the door leds. I just did mine and they came out great.The only thing I did differently was where I ordered my leds and I also used a file to make sure that there was absolutely no trace of the existing wires. But other then that I followed yours exactly and it came out great!! Thanks

 

The AC and headlight controls use the following:

SMD SMT PLCC-2 Blue LEDs 800mcd

I got 50 of them from ebay for $15 bucks. I haven't soldered them yet because my wife just had surgery so I've been attending to her but I hope to have them installed soon and then move on to the steering wheel.

 

Thanks for the quick response. And I hope your wife has a speedy recovery from her surgery.

 

I have seen your post on the 3mm led conversion to the window/ lock switches. I took mine apart but I cannot tell where exactly to solder the lights into. any help would be appreciated. thanks

 

this thread is over 3 three years old I don't know if you'll get a response, go over the the lighting sections and you'll probably find more help

 

All the images can be found here:
http://chris-michele.com/gallery/ind...f150/switchled

The main thread has links to an old website I no longer have. Hopefully you can use my main post along with these images.