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Changing The Lighting - Kenwood Head Unit

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The standard fit Kenwood head unit has white lettering on the LCD. I thought - what the heck, everything else has been "blued up" I may as well attack the head unit too.
 
Please note that doing anything like this will invalidate your warranty and could be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing! You have been warned...
 

The first stage is to remove faceplate and take the back plastic casing off the back. To do this, simply unscrew the four posidrive screws marked with red arrows in the photo. A jewler's screwdriver is ideal for this task.
 
 
Next, carefully straighten the tin retaining clips that hold the LCD unit in place on the circuit board. This will allow the LCD unit to stay put in the front section of the faceplate out of harm's way.
 
 
Next carefully lift out the PCB from the front section of the faceplate. Be sure to earth yourself briefly first to a radiator or something similar to discharge any statc from your body. Electro Static Discharge (ESD) is responsible for many a blown circuit board, commonly computer memory and motherboards and the like - so be careful! Simply walking across a wool carpet can generate enough charge in your body to fry an integrated chip.
 
 
Now comes the fun bit. I hope you are handy with a soldering iron, but to be honest it's not that hard. You need to carefully unsolder the factory fitted white LED and replace with the colour of your choice, in my instance blue. It is important to use an ultrabright one, so that the LCD shows up when under direct sunlight.
 
 
Once you have done this, put it all back together carefully, remembering to put the tags back across on the PCB as shown below.
 
 
Below are the before and after shots, I think it looks a lot better for the change!
 
 
 

| Images and Text © 2006 Iain Ross |

I accept NO responsibility if you attempt any of the mods on this site. If you mess it up - its your fault!