AC Climate Control Illumination

[njaremka]

the illumination bulb behind our AC fan knob went out on our mazda5. its an 08 with auto control.

has anyone else had theirs go out? has anyone replaced the bulbs themselves? before i order new ones from mazda, i was curious if anyone knew what bulb size it was back there? i "May" want to replace them with led's for longer life if i can find out what size they are.

 

[flcruising]

I have not taken that part of the dash apart before, but I will tell you from experience with LEDs, that you probably won't be satisfied with their illumination. They are very directional, and if the bulb is simply inserted into the back side of the controls, there will be hot spots of light. Now, if there is a plastic illumination guide back there to spread the light out evenly, you may get satisfactory results from using super flux type LEDs, but still expect it to take some experimenting.

Forgot to add - The LEDs may not dim properly anymore. If you keep your dash lights turned up all the way it probaby doesn't matter to you though.

 

[njaremka]

yeah, i know all about that - i have ALL the bulbs replaced with led's in my protege. when i say ALL, i mean every bulb on my protege has been swapped with a plug-n-play led replacement.

i was thinking about it more over the weekend, and i think i'm goingt o stick with the stock replacements, so that i dont have to worry about the color not matching right.