Anyone who does this please be aware that you MUST be comfortable with soldering and desoldering on a circuit board before you attempt this. Please dont blame me if you end up frying your climate control unit. I just did this a couple days ago so I have no clue what the long term outcome will be on my unit either but at least for now I have two nice blue arrows pointing down at night. First, either get a used unit to take the bulbs out of or go to radio shack and get a bi-pin lamp (part #272-1154). This is a 12v 50mA t1 bulb type bi pin base lamp. You may also want to pick up a low watt (15-30 watts) soldering iron while you're there. I went with a 15 watt one but do not go any higher than 30 as you stand a real good chance of frying the board. On the advice of a guy at radio shack, I went with a rosin core solder. He claims the rosin core helps it flow better for such a small job and there is not enough residue left over to worry about. I went with a 0.032 diameter solder as this was the smallest available in rosin core. You will also need either a desoldering wick or bulb, whichever you prefer to use for desoldering. I went with the wick which seemed to work ok. You will also need a precision torx driver set to remove the circuit board. Radio shack also sells this (part #64-2973). The torx bit is a t-6. Now were ready to take out the unit.
1. remove ashtray by pressing on it until it slides out then gently pull up to remove the ashtray itself. press the remaing housing of the ashtray assembly back in.
2. remove the trim that the heated seat switches are in by getting a finger behind the upper portion on both sides near the ashtray housing and pulling out. be careful, plastic breaks easy.
3. remove the two 7mm bolts holding the ashtray housing in place.
4. wiggle the ashtray housing out some until you can get at the heated seat switch connectors. undo these and unthread the black and red wires powering the cigaretter lighter from the plastic tabs they are threaded between on the bottom of the ashtray housing. You should now have enough play in the wires for the housing to hang to the side of the console and out of the way.
5. remove the upper air vent assembly above the cd player. This can be kind of tough but I did it by slipping my pinky finger in the far left side of the left air vent and pulling out. I could then get my fingers under the flange portion of the vent assembly and pull hard enough to remove the whole assembly. Then you must undo the electrical connector to the assembly.
6. remove the 4 8mm bolts holding the bracket that houses the cd player and the climate control unit.
7. pull out the whole assembly enough so that you can access the connectors to the climate control unit on the back. These are very tight and will require alot of wiggling and effort to remove.
8. remove the four screws on the side holding the climate control unit into the bracket.
9. pull outwards on the bottom of the bracket to allow the climate control unit to be removed. Once you have it removed, take it to where you will be working on it to do the soldering etc...
10. remove the faceplate of the climate control unit. there are four plastic tabs that hold the faceplate on. I used a small flatblade screwdriver slid up under the main units housing where these tabs are while pulling on the faceplate at the same time. Now the faceplate is off and you can see the circuit boards back side. Place a towel or soft cloth under the faceplate to avoid scratching it.
11. remove the nine torx screws holding the circuit board onto the faceplate. Keep the faceplate face down or all the buttons will fall out. Now you should have access to the front of the circuit board.
12. peel back the portion of the rubber cover on the circuit board around whichever light you want to work on first.
13. here's where it gets tricky. if your lucky, you may be able to wiggle the blue bulb back and forth enough to break its connection with the solder. If so, the bulb and pins in its base will pull out. This worked on one of my bulbs but on the other, the pins broke. Start warming up the soldering iron.
14. If you use desoldering wick, place it over the old solder to be removed and touch the iron to it. Because its a low wattage iron, you may have to touch the iron to the solder itself while holding the wick right next to it to soak up the solder as it melts. It's hard to describe but you get the feel for how it works pretty quick. I did'nt use a desoldering bulb so if that's your preference then it should work too. You may also want to try desoldering the bulbs while they are still connected rather than breaking the pins loose. This is up to you.
15. Once ALL the old solder is out, you can fit the pins of the new bulb into the two holes where the old bulb was. I don't know if it matters which way the bulb is placed in the holes but I put it in so the filament in the bulb faces the top of the climate control unit. I think this is the way the original bulbs faced.
16. Now you'll notice that with all the solder out the pins of the bulb are real loose inside their slots on the circuit board. To help stabilize the bulb for soldering, I slid the pins in until about half of the pin was through the circuit board and then with a needle nose pliers, I squeezed the pins together enough to keep the bulb in place. Since the plastic base of the new bulb is a little shorter than the old ones you probably dont want it flush against the circuit board or the light will be too far recessed from the faceplate.
17. Now, if you can solder, it's just a matter of soldering the two pins to the board. It is a bit tricky though because it's such a small solder connection it's hard to get the solder to flow onto the pin and board instead of sticking to the iron.
18. Slip the old blue sleeve on the new bulb (this is important so the light given off will be blue and you will be less likely to see white light shining through the blue arrows if they have small scratches.).
19. Reassemble everything in reverse order and your done...Hopefully for a long time.
haha