On this page I show how I modified the interior and painted other things.

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Project is Ongoing, Started in Summer 2007

This is the paint that I used (from Walmart).  Make sure that the pieces are very clean.  There should not be any dirt or grease so that the paint sticks.  Use the Krylon Fusion paint on hard surfaces such as plastic.  Don't use it on soft vinyl pieces because they will turn impossibly sticky forever!!!  I used the regular Krylon paint on the carpets but that made them sticky as well.  So, the only good paint in this picture is the black one.  For soft parts and carpet, use Duplicolor's Vinyl and Carpet paint (duh).

 

It is best to remove the pieces from the car for painting.  Make sure there is enough carboard to catch the overspray and only use in a well-ventilated place (disclaimer etc lol).

 

Most of the Toyota pieces are easy to remove.  They all have clips or screws that need to be removed and then the piece comes out with enough force.  However, the main dash piece was very hard to remove and I never got it all the way off.  This piece has all of the wires and stuff on it so do not remove this piece yourself.  And the airbag -- if you disconnect it, you must disconnect the battery first or the airbag light will turn on and the airbag will not work.  I did not do this so I had to have the system reset ($$$).  Fortunately they showed me how to do it and they gave me a diagram.  So if you need your airbag light reset due to a passenger airbag problem just let me know!!!  And if you have any questions regarding removing interior pieces, juts ask me!

First, a before picture.  Yuck!  15 years of dirt and scratches really make the interior nasty.

 

Need I say more?

 

The door panels are easy to remove.  Just pull off the armrest and remove the screws.  Then, remove the screw from the door handle and slide it off.  Then, the panel pops out and you can take off the power window controls and slide them off.

Steering wheel covers (just remove some screws and it comes apart):

The rear window speaker carpet simply pulls off after you remove the third brake light:

I tried to take off the dash but it was sooooo hard.  I did not succeed because I gave up when I discovered the interior wiring harness all over the underside of the dash.  So I had to paint that in the car.  Use lots of paper and stuff to cover up everything and have the doors open.  All of the parts on and under the dash come off easily when you find the screws and bolts.

These are the knobs for the sliders all taken apart. I painted the black pieces black, so now they are darker and glossy.

 

That is all of the pictures that I got during my painting process.  If you have any other questions about taking apart the interior, let me know!  Just remember to pull hard, use the right paint, and use lots of newspaper and tape!

Project is Ongoing, Started in Summer 2007

One of the things that I did was paint all of my door jams black with the plastic paint.  I also painted the black window surrounds on the outside of the car.  Now there is no more old gold color in my doors!  Before, the outside black pieces were all faded and scratched.  And now, it is nice, dark and shiny.

Make sure to use loads of newspaper and tape!

I also painted the inside of my trunk lid black including the lid carpet.  I also painted the rear windshield weather stripping while I was at it.  And as always, you can never use too much tape and newspaper!

I also painted the inside of the gas door area black. Before and after.

I also had to paint the inside of my wheel wells black since lots of blue paint had gotten inside.   I also painted the wheels while I was at it.  I was going to paint the tires black but I didn't feel like it.

I also painted the inside of my sunroof black.   It looks much better now, and now I can have it looking good with the sunroof open.  Before/After.

I haven't painted the under the hood or the windshield weather stripping and windshield wiper area yet.

Project Completed in Summer 2007

I used the same LEDs that I have been using for all my previous projects (20 mA superflux LEDs from Ebay).  On my car, taking apart the dash and the buttons was pretty self-explanatory, but it is different for every brand of car.  M y dash is the only one I know how to take apart lol. So, if you do anything I did here, be careful not to brake anything or screw up your electrical system.

 

 

I started by removing the center dash.  First, take off the slider knobs and the A/C button.  There are 4 clips (one in each corner) that hold the part in.  Remove the part by pulling hard on each corner a little at a time.  Then, disconnect the clock (this will reset it), defroster, and hazard wire connectors.  I also removed the radio by removing the 4 screws that held it in and then disconnecting the wires on the back.  Since I was going to put a blue LEDs to replace the stock light bulb I removed the clear plastic contraption that distributed the light to all of the symbols for the temperature controls.  The result is shown.  You can see the 194 bulb holder hanging out.  I cut that off so I could wire the LEDs there.

 

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After painting the pieces I decided to put some blue LEDs facing down over the tape holder sort of like recessed lights in a ceiling.

 

They had a nice effect as they flooded the area with lots of light!

 

It is hard to see, but while I was putting the 3 LEDs in I put two LEDs behind the cigarette lighter.  There was a white plastic piece there that I think was supposed to light up on its own.  Of course, it was perfect for my LEDs.

 

This more-recent picture shows the back of the part.  The wires from the 3 LEDs run down the side.  The 2 LEDs around the cigarette lighter are circled in red.  All 5 of the LEDs are wired into the socket where the light bulb for the lighter used to plug in (circled in yellow).

 

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For some reason my A/C, defroster, and hazard buttons never lit up at all. I changed that with a blue or red LED in each of the three.

I took the buttons off of the centerpiece and removed the covers to reveal the light bulbs that never worked.  I was pretty surprised to find those hidden in there.  The covers just slip over the button and click into place, so I removed them with a small flat screwdriver.

 

Then I took out the bulbs since I would not be using them or the stock wiring.

 

I completely took the AC button apart; I do not recommend doing this since it is very hard to get back together!  It is easy to fry the electronics (I did), so I won't be doing this again lol.   There was a small green lens behind the A/C symbol, so I took that out.

 

Here is the board for the A/C button.  Green is bad so that LED had to go.

 

I replaced the green LED with a white LED.  It was at this point that I managed to fry something in there because the white LED wouldn't work.  I tried the green one again but it didn't work, either.  So, I had to run my own wire for the white LED that you can see in the next picture.

 

This is the blue LED and wires that I used to light up the A/C symbol.  I did the same thing for the defroster and hazard button (but with a red LED).  The LED just sits inside of the button behind the cover and the wires come out where the stock bulb used to mount.  You can see the wiring for the white LED on the A/C switch

 

Now that I had that done I moved on to the middle dash piece.  I started by hot-gluing LEDs in there, one facing towards each symbol.  This was my preliminary design, but it wasn't enough LEDs so I added more.

 

Here is the finished wiring.  You can see that the A/C and other buttons wire straight into the LEDs.  I wired these LEDs in parallel.  In all of my previous projects I had used a resistor for each LED.  But if I wired 4 blue LEDs in parallel I wouldn't need any resistors for them.  The red LEDs needed resistors since I only had two of them on the part.  You can also see that I glued a blue LED to the ends of each slider so that light was flooded into there as well.

 

Here is the part installed.  All of the lights are on, including the A/C white indicator LED.  It worked very well to light up the symbols, but the 8 slider LEDs weren't good because they were very blinding.

 

So I painted over the 8 LEDs with black paint so that the light only hit the sliders and not my eyes.

 

Unfortunately, since I wired most of the LEDs in parallel, they didn't actually work unless the car was running.  In this picture, you can see how only the red LEDs are lighting up (remember they had resistors) as well as the blue LED behind the "OFF" symbol since it had a resistor as well.

 

So, I decided to start over.  I designed this cool overlay for the cover on alloverlays.com .  I got this overlay because it has blue symbols, it is glossy, and it says "COROLLA".  Normally this piece goes over the stock piece, but when I did that the overlay blocked most of the light.  So, I removed the stock cover so that I could just use the overlay.

 

This is what it looks like without the cover in place.  So bright!  The stock cover blocks so much light. 

 

I put the new overlay in place.  Notice how light bleeds through everywhere.  I thought that this wouldn't happen since I got black, but oh well.  If you get a white overlay light will surely bleed through if you remove the stock cover.  Also notice how the word "COROLLA" doesn't get lit up well.  There is plastic in the way!

 

You can see how I had to cut out the plastic so that light would shine through the word "COROLLA". 

 

I removed all of the LEDs to start over.  This picture shows the new LED setup.  Notice how all of the LEDs have a resistor now!  You can also see how it wires into the car's wiring where the 194 bulb used to be.  You can also see in the background the 3 LEDs I have facing down below this piece.

 

Now it is lit up without any problems!

 

This is what it looks like lit up with new overlay and LEDs. You can see how the light bleeds through everywhere.  Notice how the 3 LEDs create a nice flood of light so I can see my CD player lol.  Also notice how the slider LEDs work.

 

I also put an LED behind each symbol on the shifter.  I used white LEDs to light up the R and N.

 

While I was at it I put 2 LEDs to light up the emergency brake.  I also drilled a hole for 1 LED to light up the sunglasses area.  I glued them in place and painted the glue black.

I also drilled a hole for 1 LED to light up the sunglasses area.  I glued them in place and painted the glue black.

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Next, I put white 194 LED bulbs in the speedometer gauges and blue 74 LEDs in the turn signal indicators.

To remove the gauges you need to remove the dash bezel around them.  Take out the 2 screws, lower the steering wheel, and pull really hard on the bottom of the bezel.  It pops out.  Then, to remove the gauges, remove the 4 screws holding them in and pull them out.  Unclip the 3 wire connectors on the back and it comes out.  Then, I took the gauges apart (very easy to do, just remove some screws and bend some tabs) and removed the two little green turn signal lenses.

 

Then I put little clear blue color gels over the turn signals and glued them in place. The gels are the ones that are used professionally for stage and theater lighting. I just cut two small pieces out of a larger piece.

 

I put some blue 74 LED bulbs in place of the stock bulbs.  The indicator bulbs are easy to locate on the gauges and they twist out.  In fact, you can replace all of the indicator bulbs in the gauges with 74 LED bulbs.

 

I had these white 194 bulbs left over from my projector head lights when I put brighter LEDs in them, so these bulbs went into the gauges.  To change the bulbs, simply locate the big 194 bases on the back of the gauges, twist the bulb out, and replace the incandescent bulb with LEDs.  There are 4 bulbs to replace.

 

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I also decided to put blue LEDs in the dimmer switch.

Once you remove the driver's side vent panel (pull from the bottom), the dimmer slides out of place.  Then, remove the yellow/beige C piece with a small screwdriver and the circuit board slides out.

 

I glued two blue LEDs to the back of the controls so that the light would come out around the wheel.  When wiring them up it was a matter of finding where the power came in.  I wired them to the incoming power so that the dimmer switch would not dim these LEDs.  How pointless would that be since the 2 LEDs are for finding the switch in the dark?

 

Finished!  Now, when I dim the lights, all of the other lights in the car dim, but these two LEDs don't so tha I can find the dimmer again in the dark lol.

 

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Since the driver's side window lights up the word "AUTO" in green, I had to put a blue LED in there!

I do not recommend taking this thing apart; it is really hard to put back together!  As you can see, there are lots of little pieces and things that are very sensitive and fragile.  I'd never do this again, either!  You can see the green LED I am going to replace.

 

I cut away the LED surround to make room for the larger LED and to reveal the green LED.

 

The blue LED is now in place and it wires to the same place as the green LED.

 

Finished!  Since the blue LED is a lot bigger than the old one (and since I took it apart), the switch doesn't work very well anymore.  At least it looks good!

 

Project Completed in May 2008

The next phase of interior lighting was adding these blue and white LED strips all over the interior.  They are really nice because they are flexible and super thin.  They stick on with double-sided tape and wire in easily.  They are black when off and super clean.  Definitely a good alternative to neon!  Also, they can be cut to any length since each of 3 LEDs light up together.  I always got the longest (4') and cut them to fit.  I then could wire the part I cut off to new wires and light it up somewhere else.

 

It is hard to see it in this picture (view the larger image), but this shows the LEDs off (they are along the window).

 

For example, this picture shows how I cut one of the 3-LED sections off and put my own wires on it to light up the vents.  Very easy!

 

Here is another example.  The blue LED strip is on the top of this piece and I have my own wires connecting it to the yellow circle.

 

You can do anything with these LEDs!

 

Project Completed in August 2008 (For Sale )

My Corolla is a DX, so, when I swapped the gauges, the tachometer worked with no extra wiring.  However, it seems like it is different for every Corolla.  If you need run a wire visit JewishDragon's page .  Also visit that page if you aren't sure if you will need to run a wire or not.  It is better to know before you get started, right?

I got my new gauges and they were in perfect shape.  I wanted to modify them a little.

 

So I took them apart.  This was really easy.  The lens had two screws on the top and some tabs holding it in place.  The black bezel only had tabs. 

 

I then removed the 4 gauges so that I could install the indiglo faces.  There are only 3 bulbs lighting up these gauges even though there are 4 gauges to light up.  The non-tach cluster has 4 bulbs.

 

When you take gauges from another car the odometer will not read correctly.  So I got my old odometer and made the new one match.  I simply used the screwdriver to rotate the number wheels.  The wheels have little gear teeth on them so pushing on them gently with the screwdriver will force them to move.  They click each time they change a number.  I had to adjust each number separately.

 

I used superglue to hold the gauge faces in place.  I spread the glue on and then slipped the face through the needle and pressed it down in place.  You can take the needles off if you are careful and know what you are doing, but I don't recommend that.  You can see that the new gauge face had the C and H reversed, so I had to fix that later.

 

It was pretty simple to get all of the faces on, but the larger ones were harder since they had a little part sticking off.  Also make sure that the new gas gauge reads exactly the same as your old one because it does not automatically reset like the other gauges do.

 

Here you can see how I modified these parts.  I painted the bezel black, put my 194 LED bulbs from the first gauges into these, and replaced the green signal lenses with Scotch tape colored blue with a Sharpie.

 

Then I put it all back together.  I drilled little indentations in the white plastic through which the indiglo wires would run.

 

Then I plugged the 4 wires into the ballast/transformer and tested them.  They are not very bright.  They had a switch, but I would not need to use it or mount it to the dash.  I preset them to the maximum blue color and maximum brightness.

 

Now they are installed and everything works fine!  I was surprised to find that the tachometer worked with no extra wiring.  I wonder why my car didn't have it in the first place?  I Velcroed the indiglo transformer behind the cluster after wiring it in.

 

But after driving it I noticed that the temperature gauge did not move at all.  It was supposed to move up to the C but nothing.  This convinced me to swap the gauge motor from the old temperature gauge into the new one.  I don't have any pictures as I don't recommend doing this.  Once I swapped the gauges I had to swap the needles as well.  I had always heard that you can't remove the needles, but I was able to do so by prying up in the middle with a screwdriver and popping the entire needle+black part off of the motor. 

When I was finished, the temperature gauge worked and it moved in the right direction!

 

Project Completed in August 2009

I had always liked the Prizm version of the dashboard more than the Corolla for a few reasons.  The Prizm vent panels were all rounded, not square.  The Prizm had knobs for the temperature controls, not sliders.  The airbag didn't say "SRSAirbag".  The dash didn't have an indentation on the top for holding things.  In all, it was a lot cleaner and more modern.  But I had never thought that I would ever be able to do it, since I could never get the Corolla dash out, much less find another one.

Here are all of the parts that you will need (all Prizm parts):

• -- dashboard
• -- full wire harness (or at least the dimmer connector, defroster connector, hazard connector, fan speed connector)
• -- airbag
• -- left/right defroster vent (the window ones, the Corolla windshield vents should work)
• -- defroster duct work
• -- passenger's-side vent panel, with or without the vent
• -- passenger's-side duct work
• -- center vent panel (with vents, the Corolla vents WON'T work, should come with ashtray and cigarette lighter, but the Corolla ones will work)
• -- A/C button (yes, it is different)
• -- defroster/hazard button (you'll need your Corolla defroster button as well)
• -- temperature controls, knobs, etc
• -- Some sort of double-din unit (radio, storage bin, etc)
• -- lower center floor dash piece that connects the dash board with the shifter and e-brake
• -- center short duct piece to connect the fan unit with the center vents
• -- gauge cluster, with or without tachometer
• -- gauge surround bezel
• -- driver's-side vent panel (with or without the vent, the Corolla vent will work)
• -- driver's-side duct work
• -- dimmer switch
• -- mirror switch or blank panel

I hope that's everything lol.  You will be able to use your Corolla hardware, glove box, part under the steering wheel, steering wheel cover, coin tray, etc.

Well, the time had come to paint the interior again (for the third time).  The old Krylon plastic paint fades and scratches/rubs very easily, so it needed to be redone.  I had never even found carpet/vinyl paint.  So, when someone recommended Rustoleum products, I managed to find these paints at Home Depot.  Hopefully they will be better than Krylon and Duplicolor.  And at $4.50/can, the Rustoleum is cheaper.

 

At this point, I had managed to paint all of the interior except for the dashboard, since this is how much trouble it takes to get it in a good place to paint.  But, the dashboard looked to faded and gray compared to the new Rustoleum, so I decided to paint it.  This is as far out as I'd ever gotten it before, since all of the wires are attached underneath.  This is how much trouble you need to go through to remove that blue vent panel.  You can also see how easy it was to install a 7" double-din screen... it mounted right to the factory brackets and to my wire harness.  So, I got the carpet/vinyl paint ready, and....

 

Painted!!  Wait, WHAT IS THAT?!??!?!  NOOOOO!!!!  Ewww look what happened when I sprayed the carpet/vinyl paint on top of the old plastic paint!  It didn't bond! 

 

It happened all over the dashboard and steering wheel.  Ruined!  I had no choice at this point but to remove the dash.  I needed to get all the paint off or replace it somehow.

 

(this is the new Prizm dash).  So, I figured out how to remove the dash.  This pic was taken later for reference.  It is pretty easy to get the dashboard disconnected from the car, so that the wires are the only thing holding it in.  To get to the wires, you need to remove the defroster vent by unscrewing the 6 screws circled in red.

 

Once that is pulled out of the way, you can remove all of the screws holding in the wires (circled in red again).  When removing the dash from in the car, I had no idea what I was doing; I had to feel around and pull on stuff to figure out where the screws were, and then get the screwdriver up back there to unscrew them.  Hopefully this helps you some, but it is hard to explain XD

 

But eventually, I got it out.  I ended up breaking the dash and duct a bunch... but they were worthless anyway.  You should remove the steering wheel column to get it out.  Yes, I removed this part in the dark, since I couldn't see what I was doing anyway lol.  Finally, I had gotten it out!  I was very happy even though I had no dash.  This is what the interior looked like after it was all out:

 

I was able to put most of the interior back in so that I could drive around while I was sourcing a new dash.  At this point, I didn't care if it was Corolla or Prizm.  But, I had the perfect opportunity to do what had never been done, so I started looking for the Prizm dashboard....

 

After looking a while on Ebay, I discovered car-part.com .  What an incredible site!  It is basically an organized inventory of every junkyard/pickapart place that wants any business lol.  I was able to find a couple of Prizm dashboards really close to me.  I went on a Saturday to the cheapest place, paid $150, and they removed the dash for me and I took it home.  It was in perfect shape, and it included all of the ducts I needed plus the cut wire harness:

Here it is all disassembled:

The only thing it didn't come with was the top right defroster vent, so I got that on Ebay.  But please note that none of the vent panels are the same, even though they might look like it.  You NEED all of those duct pieces... none are interchangeable with the Corolla.  You can see there is a black duct for each side, and the middle.  The defroster duct isn't even the same... you'll need that as well.  You will also need as much of the wire harness as you can get.

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I was hoping to use my Corolla gauge cluster with the Prizm dash, since I had a super-sweet cluster, but it wouldn't fit at all.  Luckily, the car from which I got the dashboard had the Prizm tachometer cluster in perfect condition!!  And only for $50!!!  Man, there are Prizm people who wish they could find one (I couldn't online), and now I have one for my Corolla lol.  Too bad there are NO mods for this cluster.  Oh well.

Here is the Prizm one (left) compared to the Corolla one (right).  I took them apart so that I could paint the new cluster black.  I also put Scotch tape colored blue with a Sharpie in place of the green turn signal lights so that they'd be blue.  The Prizm cluster is back lit with 3 194-type bulbs and 2 74-type bulbs.  All of the little indicator lights are 74-type bulbs.

 

Here is the Corolla cluster with the bulbs all removed and then back lit to show the symbols.

 

The Prizm cluster is similar, but it has an ABS ACTIVE indicator, as well as a fog light indicator (can't see it, but it is next to the CRUISE indicator).

 

I then cleaned and painted the Prizm dashboard.  It was soooo much easier to do out of the car lol.  It actually turned out nice with the carpet/vinyl paint (no plastic paint this time lol).

So I went to plug in the Prizm cluster.  It plugged right in, but none of the lights worked except for the left turn signal.  LOL.  So I would have to rewire the entire thing.

 

Since the back of the clusters are all exposed, it is easy to trace the wires to their function.  I drew a pic of each connector, one set for the Corolla cluster and one for the Prizm cluster.  I labeled each spot on the connector with it's function.  Then, I labeled each wire on the Corolla side with 1-39, then correspondingly on the Prizm side.  So, now I knew where wire 1 had to move, and so on.

 

I decided that I could actually swap the wires in the connectors, rather than cutting and soldering.  First, extract these plastic clips from the back of the connectors.  These prevent the wires from coming out.  Clearly, there are two clips in each connector.  A small flat screwdriver will help poke/pry these out.

 

Then, take the small screwdriver and insert it in the back of the connector under the wire you want to pull out.  It has to go in all the way, and it will click the metal tab holding the wire in place.  Then the wire comes right out with force.

 

Whew, that was hard.... I almost got completely lost and screwed half way through, but I did figure it out and it worked.  I taped up the wires after this so that it was clean.  Insert the 2 clip things back into each connector.

 

Hurray, it works!  I don't have ABS, so those lights do nothing, and I don't have my O/D switch anymore, so that doesn't light up... I forgot to switch on the high beams, and I haven't hooked up the fog light indicator.  It is also green.  The turn signal indicators are already blue LEDs from my previous clusters.

 

Now that I knew that I could drive with the new cluster, I had to change the odometer reading so that it matched the previous cluster.  If you didn't understand the process described in the previous section, maybe this pic helps.  There are gear teeth on each number, so use the small screwdriver to force-rotate the numbers.  They go down a lot easier than up, so push hard but gentle on each gear one at a time until they are all right.  They will click a couple of times in between each number change.... I've done this like 3 different times, and it has never broken.

 

So I decided to replace all of the indicator lights with red and blue LEDs, and I changed the back lights to blue LEDs.  You can see them in this pic, I got them from autolumination.com .  I wanted all of the red/orange symbols to be red, and all of the blue/green ones to be blue.  Putting a blue LED behind the green indicator still emitted blue.  It is easy to swap the bulbs, just take out the old bulb and squeeze in the LED.

 

There we go, much better!  Now, they are all LED.  You can see that they are all red or blue now, even though there used to be green and yellow in there as well.  The cluster is back-lit in bright blue, brighter than stock bulbs.  Each of these LED bulbs are polarity sensitive, so that means that they only go in one way.  If you put the bulbs in there and they don't light, you need to take it out and insert it at 180 degrees and put it back in.  Took some trial and error, but I got it.

 

I decided to wire the fog light indicator to my rear fog lights, so I could easily tell when the tail light rings were in bright mode (I had a tendency of forgetting and leaving them bright).  The positive wire was pretty easy, since it already had it's own trace, leading to the third connection from the left.  My wire harness was empty at this connection, so it was easy for me to add my own wire using a wire from the Prizm wire harness that came attached to the dashboard.  I wired it to the rear fog light power wire.  But, then I had problems with the ground, it wasn't working right at all.  So, I made my own, as seen in this pic.  I scraped off the green coating and soldered a wire from the bulb to the first connection, which also had no wire.  I inserted another wire from the Prizm harness into my connector and grounded it.  The fog light indicator worked perfect at this point.  Cool!

 

Here it is, all done, at night.  Now the fog indicator turns on when I switch on the rear fogs.  And it has come in handy plenty of times.  Now, after driving, I noticed that the airbag LED and the battery LED never turned off... instead, they got dim.  So, I had to put the regular bulbs back.  Oh well.  In this pic, I have only replaced the battery light... you can see how much dimmer it is compared to the LED.  I then replaced the airbag LED after this pic.  Otherwise, the LEDs all worked perfectly, and all of the gauges worked as well.

 

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Next was to upgrade the other electronics and switches to be compatible with the Prizm parts.  Thank goodness I got the wire harness with the Prizm dashboard, because there were several switches and things that had different connections between the two cars.

The Prizm dimmer switch took a different connector.  So, you can see how it was simple to cut the old connector off and solder the new one on.  This is also where I got the power for all of the LEDs strips I added on this side of the car (zoom in on the pic).  You can see an extra black and red wire soldered on.... that is where the LED strips over the pedals and on the driver's door wire in.  The Prizm mirror switch plugged in and worked just fine.

 

Next was the dimmer switch.  The Prizm hazard switch fit and worked perfectly, but the defroster button was different for the Prizm.  On the Corolla, the switch pushes in and latches, holding the defroster on, then you push it and it comes out to turn off.  Not so with the Prizm... that switch doesn't lock down, but rather sends a signal to a unit that controls the defroster.  I imagine this type of unit turns off the defroster automatically after like 15 minutes.  So, I had to put my Corolla switch in place of the Prizm one.  I took them all apart.  The switches slide out of the holders, but I had to cut the holders and swap the backs to hold the switch.  The Corolla holder is much longer as the Prizm.  I had to cut the Prizm holder a lot to get the Corolla switch to fit just right... and then I swapped the button cap (with the symbol on it) since they were different.  OK, that all makes no sense I know :D

 

OK, there is a LOT going on here..... most obvious is the conversion from the Corolla sliders to the Prizm knobs for the temperature controls.  They were almost 100% interchangeable, but some of the pull cables attached differently from one unit to the next.  I had to get creative with hotglue and manipulation lol.... but eventually, it all worked like a charm.  Next, you should notice that the fan speed control (it's electrical) had a completely different connector on it.  So, I cut the Corolla connector off and soldered the Prizm one on.  This time, the wires are all color-coordinated, so it was a very easy swap.  The connections are towards the bottom of the pic.  The A/C connector plugged right in... and I think it works, but my air conditioning wasn't working, so I couldn't test it.  But, the lights all worked ;)  Finally, you need to notice how I had to strip the tape off of the wire harness all along the top, because the defroster/hazard buttons are on the other side of the panel.  You can see them coming out of the right side of the large blue box and then swinging over to the left.  The Prizm dash does not have a clock, so I routed the wires out of the way and taped everything back up.  None of that made much sense, either, did it? lol.

 

OK, wow, that was a lot of work, but now I can begin to get the Prizm dashboard in the car.  I had to remove all of the interior again to make way for the dash.  Make sure you do all of the wiring and stuff first, since it isn't possible to do with the dash in place.  Also, you need to put the left and right duct work back on, as well as the passenger's-side vent panel (since it installs from the back).

 

OK, I lied, the interior wasn't ready..... the steering wheel was in the way, so I dropped that.  There are 4 large bronze bolts under it, so remove those and the wheel comes down.  NOW I'm ready to go.

 

I really wanted this to be in perfect shape when I installed it.... so rather than having someone help me with it, I used this outdoor extension cord (lol) to tie up the dash and suspend it there so that I could screw the wires back on, and then the defroster duct.

 

Ok, so the wires and ducts are all in.... it was pretty easy actually once it got going... take off the extension cord, and I'm back to where I started when I first ruined my Corolla dash ....

 

OK, another problem... the dash wouldn't go in place because of this metal part, circled in red.  That held the stock radio, but there isn't a radio slot on this dash.  So, it had to be removed, since bending it like in the pic wasn't enough.  This pic shows the metal bracket removed, the bolts are at the bottom.  It is very easy to remove.

 

OK, now that it's off, I can hopefully proceed.... reinstall the metal bracket.

 

Success!!! Well, almost.  The dash is now bolted in place, and the temperature controls are screwed into the dash and wired up.  You can see the wires coming out next to the A/C button for the hazard/defroster buttons.  But, I went to install the lower Corolla dash center part, and it didn't fit at all.  You can see it circled in red (zoom in)... it didn't match at all.  Luckily, that junkyard had this Prizm piece as well, so I got that and it installed perfectly.

 

Meanwhile, I installed the rest of the Corolla interior to see if it worked with the Prizm dashboard.  Sure enough, the glove box and the part under the steering wheel match perfectly.  Good, I didn't need those as well lol.  I was still waiting for some other parts to come in, but at least it is getting somewhere.  Looks good in all black.

 

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Meanwhile, I decided to work on the LEDs for the new dash.

This is the back of the temperature controls.  To separate this from the unit, unclip it all around.  Discard the clear diffuser panel since it won't be needed anymore.  This is how I put LEDs in there.  Using my LEDs from previous projects (actually, the blue LEDs were recycled from my Corolla controls), I hot glued one LED per symbol, except for the bottom two symbols, I used 2 LEDs.  I wired a resistor to each and wired them all together.  The red/black wire sticking off got soldered to one of the light sockets, since I wouldn't need those 2 bulbs anymore.

 

Here it is installed and lit.  I moved my vent LED strips to the new panel, as well as the LEDs in the A/C, defroster, and hazard buttons.  I put a blue LED in the A/C ON light.  I also put 2 blue LEDs to light up the ring around the cigarette lighter.  But, the LEDs I wired for the temperature controls were waaaay too bright, this pic doesn't really show it, but it was glaring even during the day.

 

So I blacked out the thing with stick-on vinyl tint.  I had always wanted to do this, and I really loved the dark glossy look that came with the tint.  I cut a piece out for each section, for 4 pieces total.  I stuck it on and then trimmed the edges.  Turned out really nice.

 

With it tinted, it matched the other lights in brightness much better.  All of these lights turned on with the parking light.  Not overkill like before with the Corolla parts lol.

 

I got the rest of the parts installed, and it was done!!!!  SUCCESS!!!!  All black, much better.  The Prizm airbag installed just like the Corolla one, bolted and wired right in.  The ricey pedals came out pretty soon after this lol.  You can see how nice the temperature controls look blacked-out.  And you can see the 7" screen underneath, finally I was able to get that in lol.  Looked very clean.

 

Of course, with the controls being blacked out, they couldn't be seen without the light on.  So, I rewired the LEDs so that they came on with the turn of the key automatically; it wired to the same place as the radio turn-on power.  It looked very sleek during the day with the colorful glow and the black.

 

Looks great all in black.  I finished the look by painting the blue parts on the doors to black.  Again, those pedals came out after these pics.

 

From the other side...... hmmm sooo clean ....  the airbag area looks much better as it is all smooth now.

 

I still like blue, so that's where the lights come in... the blue LEDs reflect off of the black glossy parts for a nice look.  The LEDs can be seen even in the day.

 

So now I've got this large pile of stuff for the Corolla interior that I can't use lol.  So it's up for grabs .

And that's it!  Who'll be the second person to swap the dash???????????????

Project Completed in September 2009

Since I had ruined my stock steering wheel with the paint, I started to research how I could upgrade the steering wheel.  I wanted to make sure that I had an airbag, so OEM was the only way.  As it turns out, there are several modern Toyota steering wheels that will fit.  Perhaps the most common is the wheel from a Corolla S / Celica from around 2005.

Here is the 2005 Celica steering wheel and airbag I scored for $160 shipped (very good deal, good luck finding the wheel in the first place).  The airbag didn't work because there was a broken wire.  An easy fix!  The guy from who I bought it (jspexae102) had already modified some of the wiring to fit the 7th gen Corolla, since he had it on his.

 

Before, I had always just unplugged the passenger airbag without disconnecting the battery or anything.  I never got it to blow up in my face, but it meant that the airbag computer had to be reset (not hard, see later).  Usually, you'd just disconnect the battery (both sides), and pump the brake pedal to get the latent power out of the system.  But, since doing this resets the ECU (a problem for my car), I decided to simply unplug just the airbag computer.

The airbag computer is right under here.  So remove this piece by taking out the three screws circled in green (open the bin and take the carpet out).  There is also a screw on each side by the floor at the front end of the piece, so take those out.  The center part lifts up and out.

 

Next, remove this metal piece with a 10 mm socket.  Remove the 3 bolts and lift it off.

 

Expose the computer's connectors.  The small outer ones go to the airbags.  So DON'T remove those.  Remove the large middle connector, as that is the power to the computer.  Wait a while for the power to drain, and then you are good to go!

 

Now would be a good time to remove this fuse.  This is the horn/hazard fuse.  Trust me, remove this fuse before you scare yourself to death with the horn!  It will trigger when messing with the wheel.

 

On to removing the wheel.  On either side, you'll see two little panels.  The cruise control switch sticks out of it on the other side.  Pop these off with a flat screwdriver.  Inside, there are T-30 TORX bolts.  I had never seen these in the car before.  They are like a hex/allen head, but the corners are pointed, like a star.  You need a T-30 bit to get them off.  There are 2 of these bolts on this side and 1 on the other.  Unbolt those all the way, and then you need to unclip the 3 bolts from their retainers to remove them all the way.

 

Now, the airbag will fall out with minimal effort.  Unplug it.

 

Unclip this thing.  This plugs in the cruise control and horn.  Also remove the large 19 mm nut from the bolt in the center of the wheel.  Now, the wheel needs to be pulled off.  But I found that you can't do this easily LOL.  I had to go get some tools:

 

I found these at Pep Boys.  These are Steering Wheel Puller kits.  I bought both because I didn't know which bolts would fit.  As it turns out, the cheaper one didn't have the correct bolts, but the more expensive one did.  BUT.... the more expensive one was messed up or something, because the actual puller didn't work.  So I did need both kits.

 

Looking from the back, the correct bolts are circled in green.  You need 2 of those.  Also, you can see that the very long bolt at the left is supposed to thread into the center of the Y thing.  But for some reason, it didn't go in..... I nearly killed myself trying to get it threaded in there, and then back out once I gave up.  Fortunately, the cheaper kit worked great with these bolts.

 

This is how it works.  Thread the two gold bolts into the steering wheel through the bar.  Tighten the gold bolts in some, but make sure that they are threaded in the same distance.  Then, tighten the center black bolt, and the steering wheel will fall off.  Make sure that the steering wheel is straight first LOL so you know how to put the new one on.

 

Now that the wheel is off, you can remove these 4 screws circled in green to access the wiper/light stalk switches for replacement or whatever.

 

Push the new steering wheel on and tighten the nut at the center.  Make sure to align the wheel as straight as possible.  You'll find that it only goes in at certain angles.  Unfortunately, I found that this wheel couldn't possibly align straight, it was rotated too much in either direction.  But just a little, and it wasn't annoying when driving.  Also, notice the wiring.  The airbag plugged in because the connector had already been swapped.  The white connector from this wheel doesn't fit, so you have to swap the connectors.  The horn wire was obvious.  But the new cruise control switch is incompatible.  The wires do not line up at all.  After a lot of testing, I was able to get the button on the end working to turn the CRUISE on or off, and even though is says to push it down to set the cruise, I have to push it UP.  And to CANCEL, it pulls towards you.  Pushing it down does nothing, so I couldn't use the ACC function.  Oh well.  I never used the CRUISE anyway, but it is still usable.

Then work backwards to connect the airbag computer and put the interior back together.  No problems with the airbag once the broken wire was fixed!

Woot!  A nice new steering wheel wrapped in leather.  It is very firm and grippy with contouring to match your hands.  And the nice chrome Toyota emblem in the middle looks great.  I recommend this wheel for sure!

 

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This diagram shows how to reset the airbag computer for any situation.  I paid 40 bucks for this paper LOL.  Yours for free. It is kind of confusing, I probably can't explain it with words.  Find the little box under the hood marked "Diagnostics".  It is attached to the driver's-side strut tower.  Open it up, and you'll see the picture in the top left corner of the diagram.  Insert two wires as shown that can reach to the - battery terminal.  You will ground the wires in the pattern shown.  First ground TC, then none, then AB, both, only TC, none, AB, only TC, none.  All pretty quick.  I'm a drummer so some rhythm helped LOL.  You have to do this grounding with the key switched all the way on.

 

Here's the best I could do to show it under the hood..... the diagram is there, and the TC wire is marked in green, the AB in blue.  With the key on, and the successful completion of the tap dance, the airbag light will flash and then turn off if there is no problem.  It took me several tried before I got it down pat.

 

That is all for now.  If you have any questions or comments, let me know in my guestbook!  Don't forget to rate!