so i was changing the big LEDs in my climate control unit to 5mm LED,s the little ones are already changed and plugged it in to test it out, they are blue leds they flashed blue then went white then 1 started smoking, why is this what do i need to do to get them to work?

i have the climate control withthe dial on the right if that helps

You need to use a resistor in series with the led. Otherwise the current running trough the led will be too high.
I think it should be in the the range from 330 - 560 ohms.

if you're just doing a single led for each of the 3 12V spots your best bet is to just get 3 10mm surface mount neo-wedges. they should light pretty well, i did mine with single smt and it looks great.

go here: http://autolumination.com/74.htm
and search for: SMT II Neo
i think it's type B, whichever is 10mm

not 100% on that actually, if you have the jdm climate control (the one with celcius temperature written on it). but you could take out one of the regular back-lighting bulbs and measure it to see if the base is about 10mm. if your car has the red <-> blue dial like my usdm this will likely work fine.

if you're going for the custom soldering (series or parallel) you can find some useful aids by google-ing: led calculator
here's one: http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz
you might need to buy some serious resistors with a half-watt heat disipation, so pay attention to that as well.

This post has been edited by Zimluura: May 27, 2010 - 6:36 PM