This How-To will be for the steering wheel controls for 03-07classic trucks. It was by far one of the easiest and quickest conversions yet. I think the hardest part of it all was getting them OUT of the steering wheel itself!
First off, once you remove the switches from the steering wheel, you will need to mark the orientation of the positive pin for the illumination. Once you have this marked, take a small flathead screwdriver and open the switch up. There is not much inside the switch except for a back plate, the circuit board, the plastic flexible cover, and the pins inside.
Find the pin you marked positive and follow the tracer wires coming off of it, one tracer wire will go to each bulb, and on the other side of the bulb will have the tracer wires going to the ground pin. Very simple right?
Basically desolder the original bulb, and solder in a resistor and LED on each side. I chose to use 560ohm resistors to dim down the LED's to under 20mA so they're not blinding you in the face at night. Once you have the LED's soldered in, test the circuit to make sure they illuminate. After this, you can cut the round nipples off the blue plastic flexible pieces where the old bulbs used to reside. Throw the flexible cover back on, pop the whole thing back inside the switch and snap to backing plate back on and voila....done!
Here are some pictures for reference. The reason i chose to solder the resistor into place as shown is because it fits PERFECTLY inside the backing plate which is what you want. Chose to orient the resistor however you want but this method seemed to work flawlessly.
And thats how to do the steering wheel controls!
Edit: I have since started using 3mm LED's in the smaller 2 switches due to their size allowing the gel piece to sit flush and they still have relatively the same output.
First off, once you remove the switches from the steering wheel, you will need to mark the orientation of the positive pin for the illumination. Once you have this marked, take a small flathead screwdriver and open the switch up. There is not much inside the switch except for a back plate, the circuit board, the plastic flexible cover, and the pins inside.
Find the pin you marked positive and follow the tracer wires coming off of it, one tracer wire will go to each bulb, and on the other side of the bulb will have the tracer wires going to the ground pin. Very simple right?
Basically desolder the original bulb, and solder in a resistor and LED on each side. I chose to use 560ohm resistors to dim down the LED's to under 20mA so they're not blinding you in the face at night. Once you have the LED's soldered in, test the circuit to make sure they illuminate. After this, you can cut the round nipples off the blue plastic flexible pieces where the old bulbs used to reside. Throw the flexible cover back on, pop the whole thing back inside the switch and snap to backing plate back on and voila....done!
Here are some pictures for reference. The reason i chose to solder the resistor into place as shown is because it fits PERFECTLY inside the backing plate which is what you want. Chose to orient the resistor however you want but this method seemed to work flawlessly.
And thats how to do the steering wheel controls!
Edit: I have since started using 3mm LED's in the smaller 2 switches due to their size allowing the gel piece to sit flush and they still have relatively the same output.
