I don't think this one has been written up already, so I'm posting this as a follow-on to my climate control backlighting how-to (which many others had already done just not written up a proper how-to) found here. This mod is similar, and will change the backlight color of the stock radio.

Tools required are philips head screwdrivers. There several sizes of screws in this mod, including a few very tiny ones, so you'll need some small drivers to get this done.

Start by taking off the dash panel, this was explained in the climate control writeup. Remove the 4 screws holding the radio in and remove the radio, disconnecting the wire and harness plugged into the back. Take your radio to a nice surface you can work on.

 

Flip the radio over and remove the two tiny silver screws holding the faceplate on to the radio. These buggers are small. I ended up using a small straight bladed screwdriver to take these guys out.

 

You can now pull the faceplate off. It's held on by a tab on each side and a bunch of little tab/catches on the top and bottom. Just pop them all out of the holes and the faceplate should come straight off.

Here's the back of the faceplate. You may want to take the knobs off at this time too. Just grip them with some pliers and pull them off. You may want to protect the knobs with something soft.

Here's the backside of the faceplate.

 

You'll want to remove those two screws holding the circuit board to the plastic faceplate. This one is also used to ground the faceplate to the radio chassis with that "foot" that sticks up off of it.

 

Screw #2 at the other end of the board.

 

Finally you can take off the front faceplate and get at the bulbs that light up the radio. There are 8 of them, all covered with little blue condoms. The one that lights the LCD is the one above and to the right of it I think.

I wasn't expecting so many bulbs, so I didn't actually change my radio's color. But changing out those 8 condoms should get you whatever color you want.

 

where do you find these condoms?......

 

I doubt you'll be able to find small ones exactly like those on the bulbs, but anything that covers up the bulbs should do. Someone mentined pepboys.com has Autometer ones. They are somewhat larger than these bulbs, but did the trick on the climate controls mod, and would probably work here. I'd just keep an eye out, especially at automotive stores, to see if they have anything that might work.

If I actually change the color of my bulbs, I'll post pics of what I used and where I got them.

 

isnt the stock color like redish orange why is there blue condoms???

 

no the stock color is light blue do you own a lancer or an evo.

great looking out iodine23 i will be doing this today or tomorrow, i was actually gonna get a radio w/ a red face i was in the process of changing my clock to this same color shceme

 

If the lancer stock color is reddish orange then you may be able to order the bulb condoms for that from Mitsubishi and use those in the Evo... that is, if you want your Evo radio to be reddish orange.

I've never seen the interior of a regular Lancer at night, so I don't know what color the stock radio is.

 

UPDATE

I tried to change the radio over to red tonight. Everything worked except the LCD backlight was still blue. I tore it back apart and realized that the bulbs for the LCD are behind the LCD panel. I can't see how you can get to them without doing a lot of desoldering work. So it's back to the stock blue for me... it was a fun little experiment at least.

 

I did this and i left the bulb covers off and went with plain white.....it's not too bad. I like the blue on the lcd. i'm taking all blue off. I took off the condoms from the guages, a/c controls and now the radio.......all white!!
I like.

Tyger

 

How about a few pics to see how it all looks? I'm actually swapping in a MP3 headunit, but I'm still curious to see how the different colors look.

- Kevin.

 

I guess I could've taken a pic with when I had the head unit red (with the blue LCD display). Oh well, mine's back to stock now, sorry.