$10 shift light how-to

SuperDave · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:00 pm Post subject: $10 shift light how-to

How to make a shift light for under $10

1. Purchase a cheap 9LED flashlight from the counter at Autozone or other parts stores, usually $4 or under.

2. Purchase a 5V regulator (7805 is the general cross-reference) you can get these at Radio shack or allied electronics for pretty cheap.

3. Get some black, yellow and red wire, 20-24 awg works well.

4. Remove the 4.5V 3-AAA battery holder and smash it.

5. Insert a marker or other object into the light body, tap on it a few times to knock out the LED board, reflector and lens. (see pic 1)

6. Use a soldering iron to remove the spring from the back of the board, the solder in a piece of red wire about 4? long in it?s place. (see pic 2)

7. Solder a piece of black wire to one of the outer grounding pads on the LED board (see pic 2)

8. Solder the black wire to pin 2 (middle) of the 5V regulator and attach a 2nd black wire to the same post, make sure to use heatshrink to cover up the leads. This 2nd wire will be your chassis ground to the light. Use a long piece 8-10?? for this. (see pic 3) it may be hard to see since I bent the pins for easier soldering, just follow the pin assignments and it?ll work fine

9. Solder the red wire to pin 3 (5V out) on the regulator, again covering the lead with heatshrink tubing.

10. Solder your yellow wire to pin 1, this will be your input voltage from the ECM?s shift light signal. Use 8-10? of wire for this one as well.

11. Do yourself a favor and while you have the LED board out, re-solder all the connections on the back side for the LED?s.. the factory uses crap solder so they tend to die out after a few uses.

12. Gently pop the LED board, reflector and lens back in.

13. Use a small tapping hammer and a screwdriver to pop out the switch assembly from the tailcap.. or drill a hole through it with a small bit (enough to fit your wires through)

14. Tie a knot in the wires to make sure nothing gets pulled out, then re-assemble the light. Figure out where you want to place it, mount it using the system of your choice ( I used 2 black zip-ties to hold it to the steering column cover).

15. Attach the ground wire to chassis ground somewhere (find any random screw), then run the trigger wire to pin F6 in the E/F connector on the ECM (tan/black wire).

16. Assuming you have Tunerpro or other tuning software, you can now find ?RPM above which shift light is always on? and change that to whatever you want. I have mine set for 6500 currently. Also find ?max shift light on time? and change that from 6 seconds to 2. (this is to help avoid cooking the shift light since we are over-driving it by .5V and providing a lot more current than the 3-AAA batteries did.) If the light turns from white to angry blue for more than a few seconds permanent damage is a possibility.

Enjoy!

superbee · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject:

Thanks!

booboo · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:22 pm Post subject:

dave does this just hock into the stock shift up light if so then this is the same as the set up i had last summer only i didn't know i could adjust the time when it came on do u need an aldl cable and chip burner to do that though

superbee · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject:

punctuation is your friend.

Yes you need prom burner, or emulator to edit your tune.

91z24 · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject:

ALDL cable, no
Chip burner, yes

Nice write up Dave

booboo · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:27 pm Post subject:

ok sorry about the punctuation lol

88cavalierz24 · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 1:30 pm Post subject:

nice song in the background

steve-o · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject:

nice write up.

barrok69 · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 1:51 pm Post subject:

Thats pretty sweet idea... if you want to get blinded when your supposed to shift

I have one of those flashlights and looked at it while turning it on by accident. I was seeing stars for a few minutes geez those things are bright !

mars_man · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:09 pm Post subject:

Does not work with $8F tunning (2 bar map)...

Shift light becomes the TCC and the light will never respond like you want it.

Six_Shooter · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:18 pm Post subject:

isaachayes · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:21 pm Post subject:

I'd add a resistor to the 5v output to reduce the power out. As it is those lights are direct drive from the AAA's and over voltage is dealt with by "they don't care if the leds burn out" and by the voltage sag of the small alkalines under load. A car system power will not sag. I'd drop them down to 3.7v max and the leds will last a long time. Plus no need to blind yourself.

You could use a red-orange luxeon or other power led if you really wanted to see spots... lol

and your video crashed wmp!

Six_Shooter · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:24 pm Post subject:

phenolic · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:47 pm Post subject:

Nice, but for an automatic some people will not be needing that

The video failed to load!??!?

SuperDave · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:54 pm Post subject:

the light output difference between ~4V and 5V isn't much, If you added a resistor to the output of the 5V regulator it would have to be very low resistance, probably 100 ohm or so. Either way, the LED's can take short bursts of 5V just fine. I've had mine like that for a few months and had no problems.

It's no brighter than a regular shift light, and as far as flashlights are concerned it's a joke when compared to a real light.

it would be very easy to swap out the LED's for different colors or to add a few layers of colored film to the inside of the lens for the traditional yellow or orange light. I prefer the white, it's bright enough that i can see it during the day while wearing my helmet at the track.

When i hooked mine up, i ran the wires directly to the socket of the original shift light in the dash, that works as well.

isaachayes, you should have seen the first version.. it was a AA-Mag sporting a CREE Q5 and a 3.3V regulator. talk about being blinded..

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