LED Shift Knob "How-to"

[mwalsh]

Just realized that FB has been wanking around with me photos. Will try to figure out what's missing and replace the ones that are no longer linked.

Edit: That was painful. Let me know if there are any still missing for you.

[mwalsh]

Note to anyone who tries this - you cant reassemble this the same way you got it apart!

Are you talking about the shifter tower? Then yes, you can't reassemble it back in the car. You put the tower back together elsewhere and reinstall it as an assembly. But it's much easier to get that wiring connector to plug back in than it is to get it unplugged.

[mwalsh]

Just to let anyone considering doing this know that I had to go back in today after losing the driver's side LED completely at some point over the last year and having the front one only working on an intermittent basis, when the shifter was rocked towards the N position.

In doing so, I completely expected one of the tiny wires soldered to the LEDs to have come adrift, since that was the one point where any possibility of movement existed, and was completely and utterly surprised to find that it was actually the factory solder joint to the resistor in both instances that had failed.

So in redoing the whole setup I'm taking the opportunity to secure all the LEDs with a dab of clear silicone in addition to the band of heat-shrink I've previously used (I had already said I thought that wasn't a bad idea). In addition, I'm thinking of combining the positive wires of each LED into a bundle and soldering them to a single resistor instead of each having it's own, so that I have fewer points of potential failure and a slightly beefier wire bundle to solder on. Do the IEEEs have any comment on potential pitfalls in doing this? I've tried it already on the bench and it appears to work, but I can't think of any long-term consequences. A reminder that the resistors are 1000 Ohm each.

[mwalsh]

After giving it some thought, I came to the conclusion that the solder joint at the LED end of the resistors may have failed due to some "see-sawing" of the wiring, the way I had it routed and tied down. So, as you can see from the picture below, I re-routed it so that it is no longer inclined to do that. The second picture shows the original iteration. I'll modify my first post next week to swap out the two photos.

[mwalsh]

I'm pleased to have my LED knob fully functional again. I wish Nissan would manufacture this as an accessory item and save us (me) the trouble. Though I'm confident my latest iteration will last better than the first one.

A Portuguese LEAF forum had apparently copied my "how to" post over and the comments I could translate indicated that it was generally thought to be a lot of work just for a small amount of extra illumination. Well yes, but it's still damn cool!

[mwalsh]

I'm still battling with Facebook changing the servers my pictures are stored on. I don't know if it's a deliberate act to stop people from hot-linking to images, but it's wreaking havoc with my original post. At some point I'm going to take them all and host them someplace else. In the meantime, please excuse any that go missing.

[ucsmfu]

the original pics don't work, do you mind sharing the pictures through email or from a different website host ?

thank you

[UBUYGAS]

A friend uses an app that allows him to sync his facebook pictures to a folder on his PC or Mac similar to DropBox or Google Drive.

Unfortunately I am not sure what it is called, something like oo drive,

I sent him a message but no response yet.

But Have you seen this: https://www.facebook.com/video/video.ph ... 2657680484

I'm still battling with Facebook changing the servers my pictures are stored on. I don't know if it's a deliberate act to stop people from hot-linking to images, but it's wreaking havoc with my original post. At some point I'm going to take them all and host them someplace else. In the meantime, please excuse any that go missing.

[tomw]

Your pictures do not show up. Use photobucket instead.

[riddleyo]

I wouldn't trust facebook with anything. Hosting Images? fuggedaboudit
Photobucket it's free and I have images from years ago still there with no hiccups