Just a tip for someone doing this upgrade, I’ve found using a strip of smaller leds to come out much cleaner and have better light spread for darker colors.

Can you post any pics of the smaller LED strip you used. It looks good BTW

The best way to do it is to have one set color you want and stick to it. I couldn’t decide, so I went with RGB leds that are hooked to a Bluetooth controller. When you go RGB like I did, you’ll end up with the bigger 5050 smd led which are harder to make fit in the module. 3528’s are better for making a half moon shape behind the numbers of the controls, so if you can pick one color, find that color in a 3528 strip.

While the 5050 chip can be used in single color applications, i have found the 5050 LEDs to be better for the RGB and the 3528 SMD LEDs in high density better for single color applications.

So basically just take the strip and cut out 5-6 leds and make a half moon circle the best you can, and find a way to attach them so they stay as tight to the board as you can get them, it’ll make the light disperse better and avoid having hotspots. For the center sliders, I used white 3528’s and just fit them inside the slider and made shields out of black hard plastic so I didn’t have the white bleeding into the other sides.

IIRC I tapped into my trucks parking light relay and ran a fused line directly out of the module and cluster. So I didn’t have to worry about burning up power to the leds. I forget how I made my dimmer switch still function though. I still have my full range of dimming for all the interior lights. I’ll have to check out how i did that again

x2. If you go the manual soldering route, make sure you plug in the unit while it’s still apart, and use a multimeter to find which posts are +/- and clearly mark them. Then use a 12v source to see which orientation your led needs to be and bend the postive leg on the led (or flag it somehow). It’ll save you a lot of time