About 3 years ago after first getting my Z - I realized that the window button switch didn't glow when the dash lights were turned on. It wasn't easy to find that switch during nightime driving! I decided that a nice ultra bright blue LED would be a good fix. Did the mod and things worked well ever after...

Flipping forward to now -- all the labelling had rubbed off my door switches making them look ratty, decided it would be best to find some cleaner used ones and do a swap. Thought it would also be a better idea to change the blue LED over to bright white -- since it would match my mod'd dash pods lighting.

Figured I'd share how the whole thing was done, since I had to pull everything apart anyway ...
 

Parts Needed:

- 3mm bright white LED
- 1000 ohm 1/4 watt resistor
- Some electrical or plumbers putty
- Heat shrink tubing - 1/16 and 1/8 sizes (or just remove some wire insulation and use that) or electrical tape
- 1 foot of red/black 18 or 20 guage stranded hookup wire
- 2 pair or male/female crimp on connectors
- Good all temperature tape

My old (on left) and new window switches -- got the new one from eBay!..

Here's the back of the new switches - with stock bulb removed (it was burned out as well!)...

Swapped out my blue LED for a white one - soldered the new one into place. Used both smaller and wider diameter tubing to insulate everything -- tubing just slides back and forth into each other. Heated it enough to fit firmly!

Here's how the white LED fits into the blub cavity. LED is wired in a basic series circuit.

Used some electrical putty to keep the LED in-place. Tested it on my bench to make sure it was centered and illuminated the button properly. Had to move it around a little to get it just right.

Then applied some metallic tape (used for sealing up heating system air ducts) to hold the wires down firmly. This tape worked great the last time I did this -- never came loose due to summer heat. 

Here's a side view of things with some more tape added -- crimp connectors are from the first time I did this job, plugs right into the door harness wiring.

Here's how it looks in the dark - very nice and sharp!!!

Everthing is just about ready to go into the car -- those new switch buttons look nice and clean...

Here's how the wiring connects to the door harness. Ground goes to a nearby body screw and the positive wire to a connector spliced into the harness illumination line (red/blue cable). It was just plain easier to do the ground that way!

Everything is connnected - just need to push things into place.

Note: The approach I used was quick and dirty (3 years ago) -- a much cleaner/neater way would be to adapt the LED to the old blub base or to solder it directly to the switch circuit board.

There's a guy on the tt.net classified forum that sells LEDs fitted to old bulb bases - three years ago that wasn't an option and I did this mod this way. Figured it was just easier to re-use the old approach on the new switch! So if you are handy with electronics and have these parts laying around, it's a pretty fast job.

PS -- If I didn't want to change out the blue LED for white, could have just swapped switch buttons instead. Switch buttons are pretty easy to pull off and snap back into place.

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Make the switch light up again!

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Article submitted on 13 Dec 2010
Last modified on 13 Dec 2010
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