Illuminated gear knob for a tenner

[gazz292]

   

I have been changing all my car's led's in switches etc over to blue and green,  and wanted a light up gear knob.. but the ones available don't seem to be the current type of knob, and they cost a fortune. 

Someone mentioned on here a while back about removing the plastic cover from the gear knob, and putting a coloured sticker over the chrome square that is under it, changing the colour the gear's and shift pattern shows up.

This got me thinking of a way to make it illuminated... i used a 3cm x 5cm electroluminescent panel.. this is a thin piece of material laminated with 2 copper strips down one side, apply a high voltage and frequency with the inverters you get with the panel, and it glows. 

i bought my panel and a 12 volt inverter from https://elwirecraft.co.uk/

You can cut the el panel to any shape you want, just keep as much of the copper strips as possible. 

So, i took the gear stick off the car,  dissasembled it into component parts, and drilled a 3mm hole down the knob from the right hand hole for the chrome insert, i then cut the el panel roughly to shape, fed it's wires down the hole and they came out the back of the knob bottom.

Then i put the gearstick backtogether, and extended the wires to the el panel, routing them down the reverse lock out plastic bar (that damn thing breaks easilly, araldite saved the day) 
then i mounted the little inverter (about a matchbox size) in a convinient place,  i picked up power for it from the centre console ambient light (i have a meriva, but astra's have the same thing but around the gear surround i believe) 

This is what the el panel looks like installed in the knob,  it dosent have to be a perfect cut out, as only the middle glows through the numbers and gate pattern