R32: Headlight Switch And Dash Globe Replacement

[cowie165]

The R32 headlight switch reportedly fails regularly and whilst I am replacing my switch I have decided to investigate replacing the lights positioned around the dash surround.

Nissan for what ever reason, decided to have the lights sucking all power through the light switch. To prevent the contact lugs melting in the future you really must rewire the headlights using a relay.more details in post #24

Note: Once the gallery is back up, I'll change the attachments to photoposts

Duration:

Removing dash 1h for your first time. Replacing the switch 5mins.

Difficulty:

If you have completed a screwdriver workplace safety course, you'll do just fine.

Tools so far:

Size 2 Phillips-head screwdriver

Jewellers flat-head screwdriver or fine long-nose pliers (to remove bulbs)

19mm socket + ratchet (if you want to remove the steering wheel)

Small flat-head screwdriver (if you want to remove the steering wheel)

Pre-lims

1. Remove the steering wheel (this is not required, but makes life a lot easier)

Using a flathead screwdriver in the 4 o'clock position, pop out the horn button. You are trying to pop out the metal clip/lug you can see in the bottom centre of the pic.

Disconnect the plug from the back of the horn and place the parts aside.

Setup your 19mm socket on the steering column nut. Once it is loose, unscrew it a half-dozen turns but leave it on the bolt. It'll stop you bruising your forehead. Either use a steering wheel puller or pulling back from 9 & 3 then 12 & 6, pull the wheel away from the column. A little WD40 may help if you are having trouble.

2. Unbolt the bonnet release

You could argue that this is not specifically required, but as above, it makes life a lot easier as you can manipulate the lower trim without risking damage. There are two screws holding the bonnet release in place. Once unbolted, jiggle it around until it comes away from the lower trim.

The main job

3. Unbolt lower trim

There are six screws in total. The first one is on the right side of the lower trim, around the corner from the round driver's vent. Two are above your right knee. Three are above your left knee (the third is on the clutch pedal side of the lower trim). You should now have access to the lower dash surround.

4. Unscrew dash surround

There are seven screws in total. There are two screws on the left side of the lower dash surround. One on the right side of lower dash surround. There is one under the headlight switch and one under the wiper switch. The final two are in the top of the upper dash surround, in front of the tacho/speedo.

5. Unclip loom

Gently slide the dash surround towards you. You should have access to the plugs behind. Unclip them all. For GT-Rs, also unclip the clock. You may now take the dash surround to your workbench.

6. Unscrew the headlight switch assembly

Three screws. Be gentle, I broke the plastic they screw into last time and now have to replace the whole upper dash surround The pic below shows the headlight switch on the right and the demister/foglight switch on the left. Note that one of the LEDs has been removed - you can see two more on the demister assembly.

If you prise the two sides of the switch over the matching lugs, it will come apart and you will see the contacts and plastic 'pots' (for lack of a better term) inside.

Note that only one of the pots has the nice domed top like it should. Two of mine have melted and caused the parkers to stay on - even with the car switched off. The traditional fix has been to stretch the springs you find at the bottom of the pots, so all three are once again even in height and will key the contacts correctly. After messing around with this for nearly a year, bite the bullet and buy a replacement. JustJap has them for $44. Mr Nissan has them new for $195. If you're lucky and can pickup a dash surround chances are it'll still be attached.

Next posts will be on testing the lights and seeing if I can find a suitable replacement from Jaycar. I'm going to pull the speedo cluster out tonight and see about replacing those lights too.

Saliya has offered the following advice that may help some SAUers:

what happened with mine was that the domed plastic top of the sliding cylinder snapped off;

didn't melt. The dome was rolling around inside the switch smile.gif

I just made a 1.5mm shim from a small nail, put the shim in the plastic cylinder behind the

spring (effectively lengthening the spring) and it seems OK.

Time will tell if it's going to _stay_ that way, it's no longer a domed plastic end but a flat plastic end.

If you've already gone to all the trouble of pulling it out on your own; maybe the shim

is a useful addition for the DIYer... I thought about stretching the spring but didn't like the idea.

Regards,

Saliya

Afterthoughts

Now that all the LEDs are done, I can say that blue may not be the best colour. I originally chose blue to match my headunit. With hindsight, 1000mcd white LEDs may have been more sensible. Sure the blue looks funky, but the climate display is green and white LEDs would be more subtle. Each to their own. I would not recommend 3000mcd LEDs unless you are a EL dial fanboy.

edit 1: changed LED to light/bulb. Cheers Booster.

edit 2: added Saliya's PM on other solutions. Cheers Saliya.

edit 3: reason for recurring headlight switch failure added. Cheers Cubes.

[B0oStEr]

The items you refer to as leds are in fact tiny bulbs that you can buy from an electronics store.

[cowie165]

The items you refer to as leds are in fact tiny bulbs that you can buy from an electronics store.

Thanks for the clarification Booster. I'm off to Jaycar tomorrow and hopefully will report back with a part number.

[cowie165]

nice work Mark... I have a new switch waiting to go in

Thanks Marcus Mine set on the garage bench for nearly twelve months but when they wouldn't switch off last Wednesday and stopped me from starting the car on Thursday (headlight load reducing battery to 8V) I had to pull my finger out.

Ok tonight I sat in the car, feeling like a crim as I only had torchlight, and I pulled out the 3-gauge cluster, the climate control/headunit and speedo cluster. 76,000 original km you say? Yes, it is indeed a rare find I think that once my 89 RB26 dies I'll buy a new speedo just so the odometer actually means something.

The next pic shows the bulb placement. On the speedo cluster they are the orange/brown plugs and on the triple-gauge cluster they are the three blue plugs. According to Nissan FAST, they are 14V 3.4W bulbs. That should help when I head out to Jaycar - has to wait until Thu/Fri when I'm off work.

The metal shaft with the orange circle, on the right side of the speedo cluster, is where the speedo cable attaches and I assume when the handy Japanese car salesman adjusts the odometer to reflect the 'true' condition of his automobile

Finally, here is the speedo cluster cover. I tried to take a pic that highlights the light scratching from years of wiping with dirty chamois and so on. I'm going to give it a polish with some Brasso and take those scratches out.

I'd really like my next post to be showing you pictures of 12V bulbs with little blue covers. Fingers crossed and we'll talk more on Friday.

[cowie165]

I finished polishing the speedo cluster cover and had a few more pics to post...

(once again, I apologise for the low res, they are taken using 'still' mode on a Canon handycam)

Thanks to Brasso, a soft cloth and an hour of TV, you can now see the reflection in the cover. Nice.

To access the bulbs in the climate control, you need to pop three lugs at the top (using size 1 flathead screwdriver) and two at the bottom (using jeweller's flathead screwdriver).

Viola.

Hopefully you can see the four bulbs at the bottom and two at the top. Tomorrow I'll take a few close ups of the various lights. They are fairly unique looking. I'm not very confident about Jaycar anymore - may have to find some kind of light/auto elec specialist.

[Ronin 09]

quick (semi) related question - when I install the HICAS lock bar, do I simply remove the HICAS light globe via this description?

cheers

[B0oStEr]

I don't know if the bulbs are available from Jaycar.

I bought mine from a shop that repairs tvs and stereos ect.

It's fiddley threading the wires through the rubber holders.

Don't pull the wires tight as they will cut the rubber to bits.

[lwells]

Be careful when pulling the speedo cable off. There is a spring at the end of it where it hooks to the back of the cluster. I unhooked mine and it ran right down the length of the cable and I spent about 2 hours trying to retrieve it

[cowie165]

Be careful when pulling the speedo cable off. There is a spring at the end of it where it hooks to the back of the cluster. I unhooked mine and it ran right down the length of the cable and I spent about 2 hours trying to retrieve it

Oh poo.

Cheers Lucien.

and for Marcus:

[Ronin 09]

thanks Mark.

btw - PM me your email again - got some pics of the respray

will actually get the Tomei electronic lock and use a lock bar as well

[cowie165]

Auto-electrician

We swapped the 12V 3W (aka 14V 3.4W) bulbs for some 12V 5W and refitted the blue silicone sleeves. It should be back together tomorrow night and I'll bring pics then.

Autobarn - for the dash bulbs and some gear for my oil filter relocator.

Useless. Tried to sell some NARVA LEDs at $5.00 each.

Jaycar

Hurrah. I bought a 12V 'mini-lamp' to test fit. I also bought a few 3mm blue LEDs and a bunch of 500mW resistors. (I thought resistance was measured in ohms??)

The mini-lamp isn't going to fit without a LOT of massaging.

The LED test fit looks great and there is enough room behind each fitting to solder the resistor in nicely. I'm looking forward to it. According to Stefan at Jaycar, the domed LED will project a beam of light. If you flatten the top it will cause the light to diffuse and act a little more like an incandescent bulb. I'll try both and report back.

Jaycar LEDs are $2.00 each and around $0.30/resistor. I'll do the climate control unit first - that way I can still drive around. If it works out ok I'll retrofit LEDs to the upper dash surround. I'm hoping the blue light will nicely match the blue display on the headunit.

Cheers for now.

@Ronin09: pics received! Reply to follow

[cowie165]

As I've recently seen more and more info on the LED swap-over, here's a link to a similar thread on ns.com and I'll finish up with changing the headlight switch and a pic or two when I'm done with the LEDs.

[cowie165]

First night drive since fitting the 5W dash globes. What a change! Such a pleasure - if you happen to have a LVIS or SEVS car you prob have a dimmer switch - so this change would be a MUST. If you are like me with a 15yr car, then suck it and see. I vote for the brighter bulbs. The blue sleeves take the bright white out of them and make it bright without straining or distracting.

I also test fitted the LEDs into the climate control fittings. I had to drill out the little fittings with a 1.5mm drill bit as the LED legs were a little too thick.

An old mate visited work today during my lunch break so missed my soldering opportunity. for old mates for another day with my dash looking like Skeletor.

[arep3]

i thought getting rid of the burnt out dull globes in my climate control would be a great starting point. everyone here gave me some great ideas! grabed some blue 1000mcd 3 mm leds from jaycar for the job along with the right resistors. it took me a few hrs to get it done completely.

heres the crappy bit....

cos the bottom right led is almost directly behind the bottom right switch, (recirculate i think) it stands out A LOT brighter then all of the others. plus, 2 of the suckas are a different shade of blue. kinda makes u think, why the @#$% didnt i try them out before fitting them?

just thought id let ya's know

[cowie165]

i thought getting rid of the burnt out dull globes in my climate control would be a great starting point. everyone here gave me some great ideas! grabed some blue 1000mcd 3 mm leds from jaycar for the job along with the right resistors. it took me a few hrs to get it done completely.

heres the crappy bit....

cos the bottom right led is almost directly behind the bottom right switch, (recirculate i think) it stands out A LOT brighter then all of the others. plus, 2 of the suckas are a different shade of blue. kinda makes u think, why the @#$% didnt i try them out before fitting them?

just thought id let ya's know

Hi mate, thanks for the post.

Different colour LEDs is one of those sucky lessons you learn the hard way I read elsewhere to buy all of them on the same day (which I didn't) and then have them all tested in front of you (which I didn't)

As far as diffusing the blue light, a lot of people, self-included, have found success with filing the end of the LED flat and also roughing up the sides with a needle file or some 400grit wet & dry paper.

How did you go with wiring them up? Was it an R32? When I first fitted mine, only 2 came on! I fiddled around for a while and managed to sort out one more, but that's still only half coming on at the moment. I've been crook the last week so care-factor was an all-time low. Any tips please dude?

[benm]

Very good tutorial, I was surfing around ebay last nite and came across this:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NISMO-NISSAN-SKYLIN...1QQcmdZViewItem

Really miss white dials from my old GTS-t, maybe this thread is enough of an incentive to do something about that.

[cowie165]

White dials would no doubt suit your white GTR

I'm quite surprised at the price! As far as I figure, the kit comes with:

replacement white dial faces (dash only, not centre)

bi-colour globes

colour switch

rheostat (dimmer)

Ben do you read it the same? Great deal if that's the case. I'd love to hear about it if you go ahead with the swap. And thanks too for the kind words on the tutorial.

[cowie165]

For those interested, here are a few pics of what I ended up with. The solder joins seem fine but I'm stuffed to work out why only three of six are illuminating. I can only guess that they aren't meeting the contact on the PCB. Weird thing is, when you take one out, they all go out, implying they are in series, however the LEDs work so if they are in series and there is power going through the circuit to light up some, why aren't they all illuminating? Grrrr.

This one should highlight the (quick and nasty) filing of the head and sides of the LED

Fit seemed good.

And the resistor overhang at the back doesn't interfere with anything

[benm]

Yup thats how I read it, much cheaper than what other import shops are selling them for (this is probably a cheaper brand though no doubt).

I'd really like just white dials (including center console, which I haven't found yet apart from the genuine nismo gauges) and brighter normal globes. Whilst the blue globes are much nicer on the eye at night time than the standard globes it did attract alot of attention from other drivers.

Edited May 26, 2006 by benm

[cowie165]

I'd really like just white dials (including center console, which I haven't found yet apart from the genuine nismo gauges)

Off-topic and I prob should have just pm'd this, buuuuut:

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/in...howtopic=113600

White dials, inc. centre console gauges: $110

(inclusion of centre gauges is mentioned a few posts down). I think funky sells them as a regular thing (also CyberStork brand) but they come with SAU printed on the tacho or something like that.

Was this what you were after mate?