Chevy Colorado radio backlights

File this under one of the reasons GM earns its bad reputation: After 60K miles, 2 (or maybe 3) of the 7 light bulbs in my 2005 Colorado XTreme pickup radio had burned out. As a die-hard DIY type, and knowing that such things cost more to repair than they’re worth, I tackled replacing the bulbs myself. Unfortunately, some bean-counter decided that sockets for bulbs were too expensive, and apparently that bulbs were cheaper than longer lasting surface mount LED’s (reliability – who cares?). Thus the bulbs are all soldered in, even though 3 appear to have been designed for sockets.

Luckily, Radio Shack actually has the right bulbs. They rarely stock such a large number, but they offer free shipping when you need more than what they stock. De-soldering and re-soldering these is a tedious operation, especially for someone that has never had steady hands, but it is possible. Just for grins, I managed to replace 2 of them with white LED’s & 560 ohm series resistors. Unfortunately my photos didn’t turn out, and taking this apart, while not all that difficult, isn’t my idea of fun. It’s not too difficult to figure out which side is positive with a DVM.

Fair warning, if you tackle this, replace all the bulbs! I tried just replacing the 2 failed bulbs first (one in the volume knob – a real PITA), only to have ALL of the remaining bulbs fail immediately!