My friend has a 2004 S40. The light for the temperature control is out. The light(s) illuminating the automatic shifter for Park, Neutral, Drive, 1, 2...are out so she can't see what gear the car is in or what the temp control says at night.

I checked the fuse boxes and all fuses are intact. It it weird to me that both of these would go out at the same time if it were a bulb so I was wondering if there was anything particular to these cars that would make it do that.

I appreciate any assistance.

 

For me it was the bulbs burning out. Replacement ones are relatively expensive from the dealer. There are threads here discussing replacement with other than factory bulbs.

You can oil up the shifter mechanism while you have the cover off to replace the bulb too. This is the part that sticks and causes the ignition key to not release fully because the car "thinks" it's still in gear.

 

Cool. Thanks for the tip.

 

Just wanted to say thanks again. She didn't even mention the shifter problem because she didn't think it could be fixed, but I brought it up because you mentioned it, so it's cool that it got fixed too. So thanks

 

Glad to hear I could help.

 

Hey, another question on the same topic. I was talking to her and she said it would be cool to make the lights pink. She's all accessorized pink; all about it, and I thought it was a cool idea for her to come up with. So I was thinking of just soldering in pink LED's. Do you guys think any old LED would work, or a certain voltage...? I've never put LED's in a car before but I was thinking if I just went to Fry's and grabbed what ever small LED it would work just fine right?

 

I have replaced all bulbs in mine with blue leds. If you are replacing a bulb you have to use a led with a resistor soldered to it or the led will burn out really quick. You can also use the resistor to dim the led (more resistance=dimmer led).
If you use a single led put a 470Ohm resistor with it. If you want to use more than one led as an array (ie for dome lights) this array wizard will help alot ==> LED series parallel array wizard

 

You are awesome. Thank you so much.

 

Yet another question. If I wanted to replace the shifter bulb with an LED should I also use 470ohm resistors, or something lower? I ask because it's a smaller bulb and I assume less power is going to it and thus needs less resistance.

 

Some LED's are 5mm, some are 3mm. I think the shifter is a 3mm (actually its an incadescent bulb but I used a 3mm LED). On all LED's (single) I used the 470ohm resistor. I tried to dim some of them with higher resistors but it didn't darken them enough to my liking. What I did is I painted the tip of the LED with black paint. This way only indirect light coming out the side of the LED is used and your shifter selector doesn't blind you at night. I did the same thing on all the switches (windows, seat heater etc.). Those are also all 3mm LED's.

 

Ok I just realize the shifter light is about the only thing not visible in the pics lol.

 

Thanks for the tips and pointers. You're car looks good!


Which side is positive in the dash where the bulbs plug in to?

 

I just wanted to say thanks again. I learned a lot about LEDs from this. 'Was good stuff.

 

The positive side of the diode, the Anode, is the side with the longer wire. The negative side has a flat edge on the plastic "bulb" part of the diode and a shorter wire.
I don't remember where the + and - are on the sockets that the leds go in. If you got it in wrong the led simply wont light up. It won't damage the led, it just has to be turned around. You can also measure the voltage supplying the led. If you have the contacts correct (red on + and black on -) your multimeter should show positive voltage, otherwise negative. This way you can measure which is plus.

Also: thanks for the compliments on my car