After breaking the far right Passenger air vent into 5 pieces during removal of the dash pad, I decided to post this before I break the A/C switch!

anyone know how to get to the bulb inside this A/C switch? See pics from my ‘87 SR5 Turbo

 

If I remember correctly, this switch has one of those bulbs with the grey plastic base that you remove with a pocket screw driver (flat blade). There should be a slot in the base of the bulb for the screwdriver.
It should just need a 1/4 turn to remove.

 

If your bulb looks like this you can order T-3 LED bulbs off eBay that will fit and light a bit better. They also fit the switches in the console.


This is the gray thing you turn. This is on my "rear window" switch IIRC

 

I bought these T—3 bulbs off Amazon and they are only about 1/2 the diameter of the one in the A/C switch. Probably work for other places, but not the bulb size I needed.

Anyone know now what size the A/C bulb is? See pic of the difference below.

 

Aren't those T10 twist-locks?

(A T3 bulb will, usually, fit what is called a T10 socket.)

This site gives the dimensions; measure first. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10pc...825223508.html

 

They must be T-10 twist as the T-3 twist literally slides all the way through the hole (and I had to pry it back out with needle nose plyers).

 

I was going to give you the Toyota part number, but I cannot find the correct bulb. It doesn't show up on the parts diagrams. Oddly enough, Toyota has bulbs for other switches in the same diagram.



For some reason, Toyota did not include the bulb for this switch....

 

I just took the bulb part out of the T3 twist socket and threaded it into the OEM twist socket. No go, but may be a bad LED (about 25-50% of the ones from China don't work). Will test the bulb later today and report back - hopefully it isn't the actual A/C switch itself (which triggers on/off the A/C fine, so surely not).

 

I was able to make this work. So it's confirmed - you can swap a T3 style LED into our larger OEM twist sockets. Sometimes takes 1-2 tries to get the leads to make contact, but it does work with patience. Thanks everyone.