led dial mod

[salford09]

has any1 done a led dial mod by changing the leds in the speedo dial ?

[mattyc25]

Dont think you can mate, apparently its a serious makeover with a soldering iron.. a lot of work.
There are companies that offer this service though
Matt

[salford09]

i no how to use a soldering iron and it can be dne i just wnt to no if any1 has dne it to see what coloure people have used to see what it looks like
ile post pics wen ive dne mine soon just got to fined the ryt size smd on flea bay

[salford09]

was it just all green he dne them?
iam thinking all the numbers and didgitale parts blue and the needles wight the lights for the indicator direction,headlights, foglights,service,and stop light. and leave the petrol warning light red,gna do the dash clock,heater controle and headunit.

one problem i am going to have is the controles on the heater as ther orange plastic nobs .myt have to get a m8 to do me some billet ones

[salford09]

ther smds and theres a few of them in the speedo ive already had them apart to find out what size i need and if they can be changed

could you post a link to paddys clocks (green)

[Paddy]

You think this can be done, untill you take it apart and see the size of the diodes.

They are two small to work with by hand.

I have modded quite a few clio dashes, took one look at the meggys and closed it back up.

You need a machine that will surface mount the diodes, Its not possible by hand at that size.

[MartyW]

i am going to do mine in blue, i used to solder surface mount components by hand all the time in my last job including 200 pin IC's so with the right soldering iron it can be done.

once i have done it i will post up pics.

[trismotteram]

You think this can be done, untill you take it apart and see the size of the diodes.

They are two small to work with by hand.

I have modded quite a few clio dashes, took one look at the meggys and closed it back up.

You need a machine that will surface mount the diodes, Its not possible by hand at that size.

That's simply not true - I did my entire speedo (and rest of the interior lighting) on my Hyundai Coupe with 3mm SMDs and didn't have a problem.
The trick to it is to remove the old SMD (usually "glued" onto the board with solder paste - you can still remove them with a soldering iron but you will be removing the SMD in bits lol, take a note of the 'notch' in the corner of the stock SMD as this determines polarity) then apply a blob of solder onto ONE of the 2 contacts.
Hold the new SMD (the right way round by the notch on the SMD being in the same corner as the old one) flat against the board, just next to the place you want to solder it it, with some tweezers.
Now re-melt the solder blob with the soldering iron in one hand and, as soon as it is melted, SLIDE the new SMD into place. Note SLIDE don't try to place it down from above or it will end up crooked I guarantee it!
Now you have that one terminal soldered nice and neatly... grab the soldering iron and 'aim' it at the other terminal (as close as you can get it without melting the SMD) and slowly feed some solder between the iron and the terminal - don't worry it will attract itself to make a nice contact between the SMD and the terminal itself (physics at work... it's beautiful to behold).
Repeat for all the SMDs.

You can test each one individually without having to keep going back out to the car in between or waiting until the end if you have a multimeter - set it to diode setting and put the 'pins' on either contact (let's not worry too much about positive and negative just now as if you kept the notch in the same corner then you'll have them the right way around on the board) and if it works it should light that SMD up, if not then you probably have the pins the wrong way around from the multimeter so switch them. It's best to try doing it on some of the orange ones first so you see which way round the test pins go to make them light up so you know whether it should or shouldn't be.
If they still don't light up then the SMD is dead (probably cooked it when soldering) so replace.


I strongly advise getting good quality SMDs (I bought them by the 100 from China for pennies and they were a nightmare!) as not only do you risk burning them out when fitting, and some being dead on arrival, but tolerance is an issue too:
The stock SMDs are orange and so use around 2.2V. Red and green also use the same voltage so you'll be fine if changing to these colours. Blue and white use over 3V (typically 3.2-3.4V) but will often light up with a slightly lower voltage, coupled with the board producing over the minimum 2.2V naturally then you usually get away with it, but you'll find some just won't light up where others will.

It's a pain in the bum the first time you do it but after you've done a few it's really easy. I had custom dials made up from Metal-Monkey.co.uk in blue and white, the girl that does the emails is called Naomi and she's brilliant at getting the dials exactly how you want them if you go custom, very expensive though but amazing quality and they looked great but I had some minor hot-spot issues as I was running different colours with white SMDs and the "Gen3" Coupe uses less SMDs than for the blue and white speedo on the Siii model - never seen the inside of the Megane cluster but if you go with a solid colour then you should be fine.

I'm so tempted to do it all again to the Megane as I'd changed all my Coupe's lighting from orange to blue, using SMDs and LEDs+resistors where necessary, but I reckon I just won't bother as it's not worth the hassle to do it all again lol.