Does anyone know if these fit in the carling switch holders? May use these to replace my OTRATTW rocker switches. Wifey keeps knocking them with her knee. If they don't fit the carling holder, is there one that they do fit?

Okki

They are now............................................

Best buck twenty spent

Attached Images

       

For those of you who can’t stand green illumination light that come with these aftermarket switches, and want to match your amber dash lights, here’s what I did.

First, difficulty: Disassembly/assembly of switch – easy (no springs or contact to fiddle with). Replacing LED light: moderate, but not difficult (experience soldering recommended)

Tools required: Soldering iron, solder, small (blade) screw driver, wire cutters, and a file

Replacement Amber 5mm LED (no resistor required)



1. With switch in off position, insert screw driver into slot (red arrow) with a slight twist tab will release, repeat on opposite side. Rear alignment tabs are angled so no need to do anything, just lift straight up and remove cover. Now gently lift up on rear edge of circuit board (plug end), lift just high enough so circuit board is above notch of switch housing (yellow arrow).



2. Remove wiring harness plug insert (just slides out). On insert (picture shows circuit board side) you will notice a tab, tab lines up with alignment hole in circuit board.



3. Gently slide circuit board rearward until push button face contacts housing. You will notice square yellow plunger is seated in square plastic area of push button face (indicated by red arrow). Wiggle circuit board slightly while lifting straight up and yellow plunger will slide right out. Picture below shows circuit board unclipped from face to better show what I’m talking about.



4. We will be replacing the clear LED indicated by black arrow (also, notice circuit board already has resistors). After much searching, I was unable source an exact replacement LED, so I went to a local electronic shop who had two different round LED’s (3mm, 5mm) in amber. I choose the 5mm because it was slightly brighter, but knew it was going to be a tight fit. I also wasn’t sure how bright this choice was going to be since stock one was super bright, but what the heck…………..

If you want to change color of the switch “on” indicator, you could follow the same procedure and replace the upper green 3mm LED.



5. De-solder clear LED and remove, remove any excess solder from board. Take new LED and bend leads 90 degrees. Make sure you keep polarity the same, positive to positive, negative to negative. Insert leads through circuit board holes and solder. **Caution should be taken not to allow solder from positive lead to contact negative lead. Take wire cutters and trim excess leads so they are flush with the other solder joints on board.




6. Amber LED installed. Two items to note, LED is touching metal housing of switch, second file lip off LED where black arrow is pointing. Space is tight, filing edge of LED (only on the circuit board outboard side) will allow just enough clearance that when switch is reassembled it will not bind or stick when turning on & off. Next, bend LED upward to match angle of green LED. Now is a good time to test our mod before reassembly, plug in harness and turn on parking lights, amber LED should illuminate! If not, check LED polarity or solder joints for good connections.




7. If all is good, reassembly time. Once switch is reassembled, depress switch multiple times to verify it turns on & off without any binding or sticking. Plug in harness, insert into dash opening, all done.

I was concerned that the amber color wouldn’t match factory dash lights or they wouldn’t be bright enough, but I was pleasantly surprised, they match the factory switches perfectly. BTW, sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures.

Great writeup! I'm a bit of a stickler for keeping things as close to OEM as possible so it's good to know that there are options for colour-matched factory style switches.

Going back a few posts, if you want to really simplify the addition of auxiliary lights you could also get the Slee Auxiliary Light Harness (LIG1002 - $35.00) and the 9005 Hi-Beam Jumper Harness (LIG1004 - $6.00). These will give you a prebuilt harness for your auxiliary lights and you can set them up to run in parallel with the high beams. I used these Slee harnesses on my 80 series and it made it really easy to add extra light and to use them while driving.

Hi barryhiram,

"You're a genius!"

I never even thought of doing that to change the LED or color; mine are green. I just figured I was lucky to get "push-button" type switches that fit! I got this one to replace the "Rocker switch" that I was using previously for the P.I.A.A 520 fog Lights.

"Here's the old rocker"

^^Kinda looks like a hang nail sticking out like that!^^

"New push button"


I have this switch wired independently of the headlights so I can use them w/o the lights on! I did however, wire the switch's 'lights on' indicator to the instrument cluster illumination circuit so it will light up when the dash lights are on.

"w/headlights only"


"Now w/Foglights and HLs on"


I actually damaged the "Lower dash knee bolster panel" because I needed to cut the hole bigger to fit the rocker sw into the knock-out, so I had to replace it w/a new one I got from ebay; $110 bucks.

I love these switches much better than the rockers; even though they're green cause they do match the instrument cluster Headlights/factory fogs/cruise cont. indicators and the 'S.O.S.' overhead 911 button.

This is a great thread, write-up and read! Good job! BIG PROPS BRO!

rigtec, cheers

@rigtec : your pictures aren't showing up
@barryhiram : awesome job! love that attention to detail. looks perfect.

Thank man!

Slee is a great company to deal with, thanks for pointing out harnesses with part numbers, certainly will help others! For me, I already had a harness for my Baja light bar. In hindsight, I should have gone with a high beam harness instead of cutting and splicing OEM harness, just didn't know they existed until recently. That way it would have been 100% reversible........oh well, live and learn

Thanks rigtec!

Genius, certainly not......lol. Just happy to contribute (my 2 cents) to this awesome forum.

BTW, love your write-up on the high output alternator replacement, added to my "to do" list. And yeah, pictures aren't displaying for me either.

Thanks sandcrawler, much appreciated!

Thanks sandcrawler, working on the problem now!

Problem solved... Found my photo album set to "Private" mode; sorry about that!
Thanks again sandcrawler, your thoughtfulness is amazing!

rig

Done

Hey thanks for this! I have a couple of slee switches and I just left the illumination lead dead! Thinking I'll pull the switches and give them a dose of amber now!

Go for it jrandom!

I just went to buy a few of these for some upcoming projects and they are nowhere to be found. Hopefully this is only a temporary.

In the meantime does anyone know of additional sources for these? My searches didn't bring up any other sellers.