hvac lighting

[vinnie201]

i have an hvac that i wanted to mess around with the bulb except there is no bulb. i hear people talking about changing bulbs, do i have the super old hvac control or something?
my hvac has a small lcd screen about 2 inches long and a crapload of buttons. i opened it up, saw no bulb and i wonder how the dam thing illuminates. i also ask because it flickers every now and then. anybody know anything?

[vinnie201]

ok bulbs are soldered into circuitboard, i am going to attempt something stupid. removing old filament bulbs and replace them with white leds to match the gauge cluster. hopefully ill do it right

[Denlasoul]

There should be a bulb you just swap out from the outside. IIRC.

It is really tiny.

[vinnie201]

i honestly think my hvac is different, it has bulbs for everysingle little button soldered onto a circuit board instead of one bulb, and instead of one plug connector on the back mine has two. anybody know what im talking about? i have a little lcd screen and then like 16 buttons....

[Denlasoul]

Any pics of it?

[vinnie201]

it looks like this
http://www.bba-reman.com/images/MB2028300785_sm.jpg

i managed to de-solder all of the old bulbs out with no problem, so i just have wait until my new leds arrive to solder them in and test i will let ya know what the outcome is...

[vinnie201]

soldering partially worked... the white led diodes i ordered did not work in conjuction with the circuit, but the hyper blue diodes worked great! It took me some serious time to take those 40 little bulbs out and in, not to mention not trying to de-solder the pressure switches, which some of the bulbs sit directly on top of. but the result is encouraging!
i have hyper white gauges and alpine head unit (which is hyper white/ hyper blue) so im going to experiment a little and see what kind of match i can make.
does anyone know who might sell used hvac similar to the model i posted earlier? i want to have one in my car at least while i mess with the other, its getting a little nipply over here

[Denlasoul]

Nice way to work out the problem. Please post pics so that others can see as well.

I would suggest going to your local auto wrecking place to see if they have any.

You could always try ebay or some of the parts sources on the net.

[vinnie201]

yea i found one on ebay for fifty bucks!
i also visited radioshack and discovered that i can throw the proper resistors on the white leds to have them function properly (once i find out their nominal voltage), so all may not be lost! it is time consuming but i hope it works out. i definitely will post pics when i finally have it up and running!