How To: LEDs in the Stock Radio and Slave CD Player

[MrBru]

Thank you for the tutorial. I have followed it. Most problematic part are those 1/8" nuts on front panel PCB. I have around 300 bits and sockets at home, but no 1/8" hexagonal nut driver! They can be removed with a french key, but there is also one in this hole in the metal shield. I had to grinded 1/8" in 4 milimiter IKEA allen key to be able to remove this nut

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Also when desoldering original light bulbs, I am using "desoldering wire" to clean holes on PCB:

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You can put rosin and heat the wire on it and it will suck solder out of holes thanks to capillary rise.

I did not check my results yet before I will assemble the radio back, but in the PCB it looks like the grounding plane is quite obviously spread around so cathode of LED is going there.

 

[MrBru]

Finished my LED resoldering for stock radio, used these 3 milimiter LEDs, but also 5 mm will fit easily:

https://www.digikey.ca/products/en/optoelectronics/led-indication-discrete/105?k=LED&k=&pkeyword=LED&sv=0&s=56739&s=56740&sf=0&FV=4fc0027,ffe00069&quantity=&ColumnSort=0&page=1&pageSize=25

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Ground/negative is spread around the PCB, so you will not mistakenly switch anode/cathode. If you want to test LEDs on the bench to see that it works, there are separate voltage and ground pins on the red wired connector.