.....thoughts/suggestions please....is it a simple DIY job or would it be better a garage doing it?

im not fussed over the red pointers, they can stay, but id like to change the greenery to a cool ice blue.

is this as straight fwd as accessing the LEDs behind the panel and changing them for super bright ice blue coloured LEDs?

thanks in advance

oooooooooo wow if it can be done I am doin mine in purple then

The instrument LEDS are surface mounted and not easy to get at or replace without wrecking the panel.

ah poo

Cack, was wanting some blue VW style ones, or red BMW style lights :(

you can get kits to change them off superskoda.com

It is doable, but you need to be dab hand at soldering, and will need a temperature controlled soldering station or one of the gas cat type soldering irons. You will also need de-soldering braid to remove the old LEDS. Thing is if you go wrong a new instrument panel is pretty expensive. :eek:

Iv was wondering if the bulbs in the dial pod were actual bulbs or smd's,

I changed the smd's in my old pug for blue ones (the orange was horrid) and it was actually alot easier than I thought the hardest bit for me was getting the needles off without damaging them and setting them right again when putting them back on !

The end result was well worth it though

If you wanted a blue instrument panel, you should have bought a Polo!

If you wanted a blue instrument panel, you should have bought a Polo!

Probably not the answer x4cs was looking for.

Made me laugh though.

Im thinking of changin the colour of mine now this has been fetched up, blue will match the boost gauge nicely

Looks very nice indeed

The SMD kit can be bought from crazyled's, same place i got the kit from for my 206.

CrazyLEDs.co.uk : SKODA FABIA SMD LED SPEEDOMETER CONVERSION KIT - £11.99

It is doable, but you need to be dab hand at soldering, and will need a temperature controlled soldering station or one of the gas cat type soldering irons. You will also need de-soldering braid to remove the old LEDS. Thing is if you go wrong a new instrument panel is pretty expensive. :eek:

i have an engineering background so soldering isnt a problem for me....thanks for the info. ty for the info here !

Im thinking of changin the colour of mine now this has been fetched up, blue will match the boost gauge nicely

Looks very nice indeed

The SMD kit can be bought from crazyled's, same place i got the kit from for my 206.

CrazyLEDs.co.uk : SKODA FABIA SMD LED SPEEDOMETER CONVERSION KIT - £11.99

looks ideal....any idea how accesible the instrumet panel electronics are?

I havent got a clue how easy it would be to take apart but I imagine it would be a load of tiny screws, there was a vrs dial pod on ebay but I think it might have ended now ??

That company do fitting aswell, simply post your dials off and they do all the work for you

There not that far from me either so it makes it even more tempting

I havent got a clue how easy it would be to take apart but I imagine it would be a load of tiny screws, there was a vrs dial pod on ebay but I think it might have ended now ??

That company do fitting aswell, simply post your dials off and they do all the work for you

There not that far from me either so it makes it even more tempting

I took it apart yesterday as I have got spare VW clocks, but no luck. What I did was taking all green LED's and I tried to replace them with the ones from spare clocks, but unfortunatelly they do not work. Strange, they come off the same same clocks( well nearly the same), they are equal in size but different in colours. I purposely left about 3 green LED's in their position before I soldered blue ones in the position, but man blue ones don't work! Green ones do!!! Any idea why not?

Thanks guys

its quite do-able, a friend of mine did it in a vw, and it involved a lot of small fiddly soldering which took time but the end result was well worth it, maybe worth seeing if you can get a second hand one from scrappy so if you muck it up you havent lost your only instrument panel!

I did the same with Climatronic unit - again I had a spare one from VW GOLF MK4, I used my Skoda unit as a base and took all green LEDs and replaced them with Red and Blue LEDs from VW unit and they are working perfectly. The reason why I did this is beacause VW unit was faulty a kept feeding my ECU with wrong messeges.

I am more than puzzled, why is it working on one unit and doesn't on different one???

Panel is all right, was fiddly job to do took about 2 hours in total. Guess I have to swap them back for Greens . . . . . . . GRRRRRRRRR :-(((

Any idea what it might causing?

In answer to gigivrs, do LEDs have to be wired a certain way round Or do I remember wrong? Just a thought.

And, r1chard, that link doesn't work for me. Might just be iPhone being a n00b though

its quite do-able, a friend of mine did it in a vw, and it involved a lot of small fiddly soldering which took time but the end result was well worth it, maybe worth seeing if you can get a second hand one from scrappy so if you muck it up you havent lost your only instrument panel!

You need to extremely careful, as the instrument panel also contains the immobiliser, mess it up and your car won't run. the scrapyard one won't be much use without its immobiliser SKC, assuming that you have the SKC for your current panel. The LEDs are polarity sensitive and need to be fitted the correct way round, one corner of them is usually angled so you know which terminal is which. I've never had any luck replacing them.

they would look good on the vrs but looks a but too fiddly takin out the speedo dials tbh

Hmm.. maybe im a minority but I like the green-ness with red needle, easy on the eyes..

To throw some funkeh styles across.. uv backlight with white needles... Or simply white and red needles would look nice imo.

Its not that fiddly, if you are quite skilful with soldering iron. All in all there are 26 LEDs which need to be swaped. The hardesest job was to desolder 26 LEDs from spare VW panel as every single led had thick layer of solder. Skoda panel was easy to desolder, it had just a touch of solder on each led.

So even if they are polarity sensitive, what are the odds that I'd get at least one or two leds in correct way? I know it is silly thing to ask . . . . . .

There is gotta be something very simple, which none think of. It works on Climatronic unit - and I did not know about the polarity, so they have been soldered in any way, but I said previously they dont work on clock's panel at all. Even though I used leds from VW GOLF MK4, they do not work.

I am not an engineer or professional, I am handy with my tools -bit of an old school if you know what I mean.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys

In answer to gigivrs, do LEDs have to be wired a certain way round Or do I remember wrong? Just a thought.

And, r1chard, that link doesn't work for me. Might just be iPhone being a n00b though

The link won't work as its about 18 months old lol

also as fordfan has said the smd's have an angled corner so you know which way they go on,

I'd still like to change the dial colours to blue but I'd have to do all the buttons in blue aswell or it wouldn't look right !

One thing I would say us if you do it yourself is to take your time so it doesn't go tits up, I changed the smd's in my 206 clocks and it was actually quite easy and deffo worth it