How To: Illuminated late style heater controls

[Blinky16v 0]

Hi all,

 

I hope the below is of some use, over the past few months I have been changing the switch colours of my car from the green to red, however the heater controls have always proved a problem and the options here are indeed superb (LED's, EL sheet, light pipe changing etc) but these require a certain amount of competence, money and time, none of which I have.. soooo I found a solution using EL Wire and the results IMHO are excellect, its cheap, does not take long and requires very little electrical knowledge, hell I did it so anyone can!. So here is what I did:

 

Tools required:

 

- Philips screw driver (to remove ashtray housing)

- Electical wire cutters (to nip away plastic to make room for EL Wire)

- thin snub nosed plyers (to assist is removal of plastic ^^^)

- Electrical insulation tape (Keeps you circuits sealed)

- Electrical Multi-tester (To find a live when the lights are on)

 

Parts descriptions

 

I have no idea what the proper names are but here is what I mean:

 

- Heater panel = The front panel which you want illuminated

- Heater Matrix = The part of the heater the front panel attaches to. (houses light pipes etc...)

 

Time scales

 

Took me about an hour, budget for 2 - 3 if you've not had your ash tray and ciggie lighter out before. Most important, do not rush, take your time!

 

What to do

 

1) Search around e-Bay for some thin "EL wire" with a 12v DC car inverter (in the form of a ciggie lighter attachment). I got some for £6.00. This kit included the glue, 12v converter and of course the EL Wire. They come in various colours and you'll find them on e-bay no worries. I used 2.3mm diameter EL Wire.

 

2) Take off the front panel of the heater controls, (pull the knobs off first) use you fingers to pry off the panel from the bottom corner. (You might find using a flat ended screw driver helps)

 

3) Remove all the light pipe accessories from the back of the heater panel, one green one from the center dial and the two clear ones from the other two.

 

4) You are now left with 3 thin rings on the back of each dial, they are the misted white rings, leave these in place as they will help spread the light evenly.

 

5) Remove the ashtray and ciggie lighter housing.

 

If you have gauges installed under the ash tray (you'll need to remove them), I would put the converter behind them so run the EL wire up from there to just above the circular ciggie lighter housing hole, there is a small rectagular hole there you can use to run the EL Wire out of and into the Heater panel.

 

If you do not have gauges you could house the converter behind the ashtray, so run the wire to the ciggie lighter housing from here.

 

 

6) Using the glue which comes with the EL Wire or a hot melt glue gun, carefully glue the EL wire to the back of the heater panel, hold the panel up to the light and you'll see where you need to stick the wire.

 

7) You will need to over-lap the wire in places as in effect you want to loop the wire around each dial hole so you get good illumintation.

 

8.) You will need to hack a bit of the plastic on the heater matrix away to make space for the EL wire but you'll see this and be able to determine the amount of hacking required. It is nothing serious and as you have removed the light pipe accessories from beind the front panel dials, so these plastic bits are not required.

 

9) You'll also need to just nip a bit out of the edge (near bottom right heater matrix screw) so the EL Wire can fit nicely into the back of the heater panel unhindered.

 

10) Re-fit panel (this is where you can figure out if you hacked enough plastic away from the front of the matrix!)

 

11) Take the converter which plugs into the ciggie lighter, you will note that the end has a metal post which is sprung. Unscrew the housing this is in and turn the post around (through 180 degress and attach a piece of wire to it (this will be your live wire), feed the wire through the hole the metal post used to go through and screw back on. Use the electrical tape to seal this up. The power on the ciggie lighter is activated when thie post is depressed, so turning it through 180 degrees will allow power to flow to it as it depresses the fuse.

 

12) You will note that there are two sprung clips on either side of the converter, attach another wire to one of these and again wrap the electrical tape around both these clips to prevent any shorts. This is your negative wire.

 

13) Using your multitester find out which wire gives you 12v when the lights are switched on, I used a feed from the ciggie lighter itself, then, find a good earth.

 

14) Wire in the live and earths from the 12v EL converter into you newly found live and earth, then job done!!

 

 

 

Anyway, the above may sound complicated but this is probably my description rather than what is actually required. As soon as you take off the front panel of the heater controls, all will become clear. Hell for 6 quid you can't go wrong and for the hour of two you'll spend doing this the results (providing you do a good job of course) are great, better then I expected!. Good luck and hope this helps.

 

 

Further notes:

 

You may have excess EL Wire left over, you can cut EL Wire to length if you can be ar5ed to, I used the excess on mine to light up my ashtray in red instead of the standard green.

 

You undertake the above at your own risk.

[Blue_Joe 0]

Sounds Fantastic as I've been after doing this for a long time!!!!!

 

GOOD WORK FELLA!!!!

 

PS: Any Pics??? - And if you PM one of the mods they'll add this to the knowledge base!!!!!

[woody 0]

Nice that looks greatr and a lot cheper than EL sheets.

Cheers

[Lippy 0]

you got any pics of the end result ? that looks well worth it!

 

nice one

 

A

[Andy Brookes 0]

that looks cool, whole lot easier than the 15 of so LED's that I fitted to mine. Well done

[Blinky16v 0]

I'll get some pic's of the finished result tonight, need it to be nice and dark :)

[fla 9]

That's exactly what I had planned to do on the panel - the switches light up nicely with leds, i just need to do this one too. Well done.

Look forward to seeing the "lights on" pics

[GIXXERUK 0]

excellent mate i've just ordered some el wiring , def give this a go , i hate the drab heater illumination as i've done everything else with red led's

[ZippyVR6 0]

What is el wire? not spanish is it?

[GIXXERUK 0]

electroluminescent wire :-)

[ZippyVR6 0]

so lights up with current. Cool.

[GIXXERUK 0]

360 degree lighting , runs cool and non toxic

can be bought in sheets but is more expensive

[corradophil 3]

Excellent, just had a look on ebay and it can be purchased cheaply, the advert I looked at seemed to be advertising a free gift of access to sky without the need for a sky box, dish etc.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the night shot, I will probably give this a go myself.

[Stan 24v 0]

Top write up mate.

 

How thing is the wire (what gauge)?? I wonder if this could be used for the switches and floodlighting for the clock too?????????

[Blinky16v 0]

You can get different gauge of EL wire, I used the 2.3mm diameter but I believe you can get thinner and thicker diameters.

 

Try a guy called red_ferrari who owns an e-bay shop called M-99, thats where I got mine:

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Car-Neon-El-Wire- ... dZViewItem

 

Hope this helps

[GIXXERUK 0]

Blinky16v, did the sky link work doug ? phew ! i ordered the 2.3mm , iirc you can get 0.9, 2.3, 5.6 mm

[Blinky16v 0]

Actually no I didn't... can't believe I missed an opportunity to get free porn...

 

I've updated the "How To" with the gauge of EL Wire I used. :)

[Dixxy 0]

Anyone tried this with blue EL wire? do you think it'll lokk godd as i have blue gauges.

[fla 9]

Did this guy supply the inverter etc as well - there doesnt seem to be any mention of it in his ad?

[Blinky16v 0]

IMO it should work fine, I guess you could even have standard green if your keeping your 'rado OEM.

 

 

Night shots added, sorry about quality of shots taken on pokey camera phone.

[Stan 24v 0]

Im gonna look into it, cheers for the link ;)

[Blinky16v 0]

fla, I believe the inverter (I may have called it the converter in error) is in the ciggie/ cigar lighter plug which you can wire into the cars 12v electric supply. Either way the setup works fine on a 12v dc supply.

[GIXXERUK 0]

my el wire arrived today ! fast delivery , i'll sort it at the weekend , thanks for the heads up on this doug

got mine here :-

 

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RED-NEON-TUBE-WIR ... dZViewItem

[Trig 0]

Now Wikified. :)

[Blinky16v 0]

Sweet, cheers triggermyson :)