Soldering LED's for climate control color change..., two aren't lighting up... Options

[jophish]

So i'm in the process of changing the interior lights of my car, got everything done except the climate control unit, which is currently sitting in pieces right next to me. Now i've gone in and soldered blue LED's onto the terminals where the green ones used to be (i'm talking about the ones hard wired in to the board, not the twist in lights). The only issue is that only 6 of the 8 lights are lighting up. The only ones that aren't are the one for the windshield defroster, and the one for the AC...the polarity matches that of the LED's that i clipped off before, so i dunno what's up. Are they on a different circuit that requires another part of the unit to be plugged in?

If anyone has any experience with this sorta thing some assistance would be great....i'm so close to getting this project done.

-Joe

This post has been edited by jophish: Jul 15, 2008 - 12:39 PM

[hasty]

Umm did you plug the harness? the defroster has it's own harness and atleast i did forget it when i took my climate control off

This post has been edited by hasty: Jul 15, 2008 - 12:46 PM

[njccmd2002]

believe it or not, those leds are so delicate that they can burn even with soldering. some are defective. first thing just change the leds.

Congrats on doing this yourself. not many like to venture into these things.

i test my leds first before soldering. usually they require 3.4 volts. so 1 or 2 1.5 batteries together and i test them.

another thing make sure you did not short out the lines, sometimes you may have reversed the polarity and think you have it right. if all else fails just test the polarities with a tester,

[Ugglan]

my multimeter has an "test diod" mode that makes it possible to se if a diod is working or not, even if the diod is soldered or loose...might bee good to know

[jophish]

the LED's are all on the same harness...the defroster that's not lighting up is the one for the front windshield, the rear defroster unit actually came out amazing, put a blue LED in the bottom and changed the orange LED to red. Originally, i clipped the LED for the AC first and tested it out...nothing doing, but i used the same LED to replace another one and it works, which leaves me baffled as to why those two don't work...

[garin]

the connection may not be good. i had that problem with mine. the bezel around the ac unit was lose, somehow it effected the led in my front defroster. i popped it in tight then it worked. also how many watts is your soldering iron? i heard of people having trouble with 15+ sometimes.