W203 Blue
06-25-2007, 11:56 AM
#27
Senior Member
Before you get started, you're gonna need a few items.
1. A good pair of tweezers. Erem ES7A are my choice
2. Stereo Zoom microscope. My Nikon cost over 10K, but Scienscope.com has more reasonable units.
3. A hot air soldering station. Edsyn 971HA is about $ 650.
4. Flux Pen. It is not the flux capacitor from "Back to the Future" films, but a device that allows rework of surface mount parts. A Kester 959T is what I use.
The cabin instrument illumination in the W203 is mostly acomplished by LED's that are surface mounted on circuit boards with lead free solder. There are a lot of them. Each LED has a series resistor associated with it to limit the current flowing in the LED. The value of the resistors is different depending on the location. The factory has adjusted the resistor values to have even illumination regardless of the distance from and size of area lit by the particular LED. The need for a microscope should tip you off that the LED's and resistors are pretty darn small. In most cases they fit in this circle ---> O. To make matters worse, the resistor value is different for white v. the blue LED's if you care about even illumination. They are cheap, less than .15 ea for the LED's, and .04 ea for the resistors. There were 15 in my headlight & mirror switch. I briefly considered changing them to red, like aircraft lighting, but then I found out some BMW's were lit red, and I was not having any of that!
If you are still interested in bringing a little blue into your life, I imagine it will take you a good two weeks with your car all apart, after you have identified all the different parts you will need. It will prolly take a week to identify all the varities of illumination devices in the cabin and convert them to Blue LED.
If I can solve the Korean conflict, I might work on this project. Until then.....pass the Martell X.O. Cognac.
1. A good pair of tweezers. Erem ES7A are my choice
2. Stereo Zoom microscope. My Nikon cost over 10K, but Scienscope.com has more reasonable units.
3. A hot air soldering station. Edsyn 971HA is about $ 650.
4. Flux Pen. It is not the flux capacitor from "Back to the Future" films, but a device that allows rework of surface mount parts. A Kester 959T is what I use.
The cabin instrument illumination in the W203 is mostly acomplished by LED's that are surface mounted on circuit boards with lead free solder. There are a lot of them. Each LED has a series resistor associated with it to limit the current flowing in the LED. The value of the resistors is different depending on the location. The factory has adjusted the resistor values to have even illumination regardless of the distance from and size of area lit by the particular LED. The need for a microscope should tip you off that the LED's and resistors are pretty darn small. In most cases they fit in this circle ---> O. To make matters worse, the resistor value is different for white v. the blue LED's if you care about even illumination. They are cheap, less than .15 ea for the LED's, and .04 ea for the resistors. There were 15 in my headlight & mirror switch. I briefly considered changing them to red, like aircraft lighting, but then I found out some BMW's were lit red, and I was not having any of that!
If you are still interested in bringing a little blue into your life, I imagine it will take you a good two weeks with your car all apart, after you have identified all the different parts you will need. It will prolly take a week to identify all the varities of illumination devices in the cabin and convert them to Blue LED.
If I can solve the Korean conflict, I might work on this project. Until then.....pass the Martell X.O. Cognac.
06-26-2007, 04:06 AM
#31
MBWorld Fanatic!
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Orange County
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2005 C Wagon (No snickering please!)
Figure about $ 150 for parts and $ 2,400 for the tools to install them. You'd better be pretty good with surface mount rework, as you risk thousands of dollars worth of Mercedes assemblies.
