After you get those six tabs straight, then gently pry the LCD up and off from the front. Do it in little steps, working around. This pic shows the front of the circuit board, after the LCD has been removed. There are three bulbs, each soldered to the circuit board. The bulbs themselves are clear glass, but each has a tiny white rubber condom over it. Mine has a small amount of heat discoloration on the circuit board around the bulbs.-
- 9-bulbs.jpg (53.75 KiB) Viewed 38818 times
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Now, the question is what bulb to use to replace them with. I do not know. There is another thread here that says to use a 12V 100mA bulb. The only place near me to get a solder-in bulb like that is radioshack, and they have a 12V bulb about the same size, but it's specs make me think it would not be bright enough. I did a lot of looking, and so far what I think would be the best match for what is in there is an 8640 bulb. (do a google shopping search for 8640 bulb) I thought about ordering some.
I also thought about ordering some 2162 bulbs, which are rated at 10,000 hours. In the end what I did was go to the local auto parts store and bought two two packs of "74" bulbs. They are a wedge base bulb, but there is enough metal wire in the wedge base to bend it to fit the holes for the stock bulbs. These 74 bulbs are "T 1 3/4" size, a bit bigger than the bulbs I took out, but still fit ok. They were too big to fit the little white rubber bulb condoms on. (I think the 8640 bulbs are the right size, perhaps T1 1/4, the 2162's are the larger T1 3/4 size)
So without embarrassing myself by posting pics of amateur soldering, I'll just say that you can unsolder the failed bulb, and solder in the replacement. You might consider, if one failed, how long till the next one fails. I replaced all three. Then it is a matter of putting it back together, which is -
push the LCD and metal cover back on
- holding it tightly against the circuit board, re-bend the six tabs to lock it in place
- re-attach the circuit board to the front plastic cover with all the buttons by replacing the five screws
feed the wires through the chassis, and click the face plate back onto the chassis, engaging all eight tabs
- re-attach the two wire bundles to the main board
- if you had a tape unit, screw it back in place
- snap the bottom cover back on
- push the knobs back on the front. They are keyed, so line them up- reinstall the radio in the car