New Roadster LED guides!

[Struyk]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

this one is for Kane or Rich... I'm soldering now but have come to the front fog switch and noticed that on FQ101 it states that the backlight is the smaller of the LEDs. Is this correct? I'm going to need a smaller LED if I need to swap over the smaller one...

[smartsparky]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

Yes, you are right I'm afraid.... :frown:

Rather than buying a whole load of mini LEDs, a good work around is to carefully scrape off the resin that covers the track leading to the LED on the right. With the copper track exposed, you can solder a larger LED to it. However, you need to have a steady hand! The voltage is slightly different so the LED will appear a little bit dimmer than the others but it's not too bad. We noticed with white LEDs that the standard green status LED (the one above) gets a bit washed out.

[Struyk]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

well that was a balls up of a night! I ended up running out of white LED's because I did my switches first and only realised when doing the clocks that I wasn't supposed to be doing the switches and promptly run out. Then the soldering iron tip dropped off so it wasn't very sharp anymore. That didn't help when I had to unsolder the LED's from the switches to put back into the clocks and then put it in the car to find none of the needles are lighting and all of the rev counter scale! I removed and found I'd put the first rev counter LED in back to front and that cured that. Still no needles though. Double checked the polarities - all OK so I'm assuming it's because I had to remove them from the switches and have overheated them. Back to the shop for a soldering iron and more LED's!!

[Struyk]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

oh, does anyone have one blue LED that they would be willing to send me? I only need one to replace the one I *cough* accidentally unsoldered for the high beam warning. I'll have to buy 10 otherwise but in that case, anyone want to buy nine off me???

[RichG]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

Send me an SAE and I'll send you the LED.

You have PM

[fat_rick]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

It's because I changed them over! :p

The article doesn't mention how to do this... is it a lot of work? I completely agree they're the wrong way round, and if it is a job accessible to a largely unskilled muppet like me I'll swap 'em.

I don't think I care enough to move the rear-screen-heater to the RHS, but I would definitely buy a gear-lever knob with the auto button on the right - and I wish it was right for gears and left for neutral!

[RichG]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

It's about 10 minutes to do, the pods are linked by a wire that can be unplugged.

Take the pods out, remove the retainers (4 small torx screws T10 if memory serves), remove link cable, swap pods, re-attach cable, replace retainers, re-fit pods.

Job done

[Struyk]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

Rich - while you are on here right now - tell me, are the pods LED's the same as the ones used to illuminate the speedo MF display?

[RichG]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

They are the side leds, yes. There are a few ways of doing the pods though!

[Struyk]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

I saw that Kane had a ring of light on his and I'll start the pods once I have the new LED's to finish them off and a new soldering iron! At least I can use the other 8 that I have left after doing the speedo! Phew - a silver lining!

[fat_rick]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

Thanks Rich, I'll give that a go next time I have some spare daylight!

And if I **** it up the car should still be drivable to a competent person .

[Evilution]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

I'm assuming it's because I had to remove them from the switches and have overheated them.

Yep. Soldering SMDs is a 1 shot affair, soldering doesn't add a great deal of heat but desoldering kills them pretty much every time.

I have a good and a rubbish soldering iron, when I use 1 on each side I can sometimes get the LEDs to light up with the residual charge flowing from the bad one to the good one. You can actually see when they die (usually halfway through getting them off the board).

[smartsparky]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

Rich - while you are on here right now - tell me, are the pods LED's the same as the ones used to illuminate the speedo MF display?

You can't directly replace the side LEDs with the vertical ones. If you follow the tracks, you will see that there are two LEDs per circuit. One vertical LED needs the full voltage so you need to do some creative bridging!

LEDs do offer the cheapest and most effective solution for the pods - make sure you get the LEDs pointing in the same direction as the ones you remove to avoid dark spots.

Providing you have the correct temperature on the soldering you shouldn't have a problem with resoldering LEDs.

[fat_rick]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

Rich - just been reading the pod removal guide... do I need to get down the back of the centre console and unplug the cable there, or will I have enough cable slack to get access without doing so?

[smartsparky]

Re: New Roadster LED guides!

If you want to simply swap the pods around then you don't need to remove the pods complete from the car. However, it is fiddly and you have to be careful not to drop the T8 screws from underneath the pods. The pictures towards the bottom of this guide show you what you are looking for:

http://fq101.co.uk/roadsterLEDs_pods1.asp