Man on the 05 Dodges there is some work that has to be done if you want simple clean LED dash lighting. Before the 05s all you had to do was simply pull the bulb out of the socket and replace it with a LED. But with the 05s and newer they made the damn bulb and socket all one piece. So the choices were A) spend more money and time trying to find older sockets (dealership doesn't carry them anymore) or B) use some simple basic soldering skills and do a FREEBIE mod to the existing SOB sockets. Here's what I did...

First thing you need to do is get those pesky bulbs out of their sockets. To do this correctly you need to relase the connector tabs from the socket base. To do this you'll need a pick tool or similar tool. Simply pry to wedge the tools head down in between the inside of the tab and the slot. This will cause the connector tab to loosen itself from its original wedged grip slot.
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/removeclip.jpg



After you have successfully loosened the tabs, gently pull the bulb out. As it comes out it should come out witrh the tabs intact and look like so...
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/bulb.jpg



Now all you need from that bulb is of course the connector tabs. These tabs are what give power to the LED from the cluster panels circuit board via metal contact. One side is postitive the other is negative. That doesn't matter but I'm just noting it. Anyways, remove the tabs by twisting them off the wire. They will break right apart so don't worry, just twist ;). You'll have these and thats all you want. Discard the bulb now if you wish.
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/clips.jpg



Next grab you some strands of good qualtiy wire. You'll need two strands for both positive and negative contacts from the LED. Braid or twist the wire so that its not a bunch of single strands and will make for a better connection all twisted together like so....
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/wirestrands.jpg



Ok, now onto the LED. You'll notice it has two leads coming from the bottom of it. Do one lead at the time to keep it easy work space. Simply twist your braided or twisted wires onto one of the leads of the LED.
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/wrapwireled.jpg



Now comes the fun part. Solder! Well, I like to solder so its fun for me anyways ;). Simply begin to solder the twisted wire onto the LED lead so you'll have a nice solid connection like so....
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/solderonwire.jpg




Repeat the same steps to the other lead now....




Ok now you have both leads soldered securely. Now its time to solder them to the tabs. First you'll need to slide the tabs back down into the socket. They slide right down in their own slot like so....
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/clipsinsocket.jpg



Now grab your LED and make the wires you just soldered on, make them go up each side of the LED like so...
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/ledsoldered.jpg




Now slide your LED into the socekt. You might notice it will be kinda snug from the solder being on there. Thats a good thing because you want it snug since these LEDs don't fit snug unless you solder them in ;). Make both stands come out along side the tabs on each side. Warp them under or over the connector tabs. Your preference. It should look like this now...
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/wireunderboth.jpg


Zoomed in view of one side....
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/wireunder.jpg

Ok, now all you have to do is solder the strands of wire onto and around the connector tabs like so...
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/soldered.jpg

Zoomed in view...
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/solderzoom.jpg



And thats it folks. Trim off any ecess wire and your all good to go. Took me maybe 10 minutes to solder these. Nothing to this so don't be worried if your one of the 05 folks and want some LEDs in your dash but don't want to hassle with going all over town trying to find older socekts.
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/zoom1.jpg
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/zoom2.jpg
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/zoom3.jpg
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/zoom4.jpg


Oh and just a cool front pic of what the new super star blue LEDs look like. Pretty cool huh?
http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/05dashhow_to/zoomfrontled.jpg

Wow looks really good man.

I did that with my old cougar, a VERY time consuming process.

I did that with my old cougar, a VERY time consuming process.

Luckily it wasn't for me. Took me about 5 minutes per each LED to solder up onto the socket.

Wow looks really good man.


danka! :D

That looks crazy good, man. If I only had the patience and skills....

Jesus that is a lot of work but looks tits bro ;)

Jesus that is a lot of work but looks tits bro ;)


Actually its not all that much work. I just took bunches of pics to make the process go easy and understandable for the next guy....

Has anyone tried this on the cobalt yet? If it's not too dificult I would try it cause it looks awesome.

Hot...very hot.

Good job man!

Nice job as always oj!!

Thanks guys. 194 wedge bulbs are typically what are found in most cars. If you guys have the ones like these bulbs where they are made in with the socket itself, you'll have to do the same or go find older wedge style sockets.

This looks more in depth than it really was so don't fear to do it this way if you guys do end up having the same type of dash lights. Its not all that hard and looks a ZILLION times better than how my stock dash looked (seafoam green lighting bleh). ;)

i changed mine too, i used autolumination's Matrix bulbs.... (03 here sucka, no special work required) lol!

im glad people are getting rid of that indiglo green crap.

WOW that is beautiful

Thanks guys!

Yeah, that is extremely nice. Where do you get the bulbs from??

Do the SRT 4s have the auto light feature that the cobalts have? That is to say, do the lights in the gauges/headlights/tail lights come on automatically via a sensor? i only ask because I wonder if that feature would cause issues in the cobalts...If it won't, I'll probably end up trying this on my cobalt.

No, SRTs dont have that. Its mainly Chevy for now, others are slow to add it.

Has anyone tried this on the cobalt yet? If it's not too dificult I would try it cause it looks awesome.

dont effin do it to your cobalt...the lights are integrated into the circuit board...i pulled my gauge cluster apart to find out...and my gauges got all screwy, got my speedo working properly again and my rpm gauge too...but gas gauge is on the money sometimes and sometimes off..way off...so take some advice if you want a different color gauge cluster, get the overlay! dont disassemble anything!

dont effin do it to your cobalt...the lights are integrated into the circuit board...i pulled my gauge cluster apart to find out...and my gauges got all screwy, got my speedo working properly again and my rpm gauge too...but gas gauge is on the money sometimes and sometimes off..way off...so take some advice if you want a different color gauge cluster, get the overlay! dont disassemble anything!
Well, that settles it for me then, no LED for me

Looks Good :cool:

dont effin do it to your cobalt...the lights are integrated into the circuit board...i pulled my gauge cluster apart to find out...and my gauges got all screwy, got my speedo working properly again and my rpm gauge too...but gas gauge is on the money sometimes and sometimes off..way off...so take some advice if you want a different color gauge cluster, get the overlay! dont disassemble anything!

A guy over on the Impala forums I used to look at fooled around with his gauge cluster. I think on every GM vehicle the lights are directly soldered into the board. With some careful handy work and patience, the guy was able to change the bulbs in his cluster to LEDs. It envolved removing the stock lights via un-soldering, putting together an LED-resistor combo, then soldering it back in. If you have some experience working with integrated circuitboards then you could pull it off, otherwise you'd prolly end up burning out your entire cluster.

Edit:

Here's the link to the guy that did the service on his cluster (as well as other clusters):

http://naioa.com/v2/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=5802

I know it's for Impala/Monte's only but if you know you're stuff about CB's then you may want to talk to this guy about the Cobalts clusters, either that or find someone in the Cobalt business who thinks they can pull this off.

that looks great.... :twothumbs

Looks totally sexy. I've always been a HUGE fan of blue elumination on the dash, a mod I think benifates almost any car.

Just more updated pics since I finally got all of them in and installed....

http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/small.jpg

http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/small1.jpg

http://www.haknslash.com/pictures/LED/mydash/small2.jpg

Now you gotta match the boost gauge to the dash.

Now you gotta match the boost gauge to the dash.


and the HVAC panel as well :)

Boost gauge is getting swapped out for a SW unit probably.
http://www.sw-performance.com/productpics/640pic1.gif

hey hacknslash, what are you going to do for the HVAC? i have 5 LED matrix bulbs and i only have two, so i dont know what to do for the hvac. I mean, i could try and take them apart but i can see theres resistors in there...

hey hacknslash, what are you going to do for the HVAC? i have 5 LED matrix bulbs and i only have two, so i dont know what to do for the hvac. I mean, i could try and take them apart but i can see theres resistors in there...


Check the lighting forum on srtforums. There is a sticky showing you how to do the HVAC panel. You won't use the 5 LED ones because it doesn't take 194 LEDs. It takes 5mm ones.