$$$frumnuttin'

I thought I should continue contributing some technical aids to the forum, so I pulled together this little gem while repairing my shifter PRNDL. This is not a 'how to' for replacing the shifter as that has been covered many times elsewhere, but here you will see what can happen after years of service. In fact, I am on my 3rd 'little red plastic piece' (lrpp) in 56000 miles and 15 years of ownership. Obviously, GM missed the long term aging effects of heat from the standard bulb. A simple lab test for enviromental accelerated aging would have revealed this poor design. Anyway, be on the lookout for this condition and certainly convert your standard bulb in the shifter to an LED to prevent this. Furthermore, no one sells the lrpp as an individual item. The only way to get one is to buy the entire shifter assembly. New they are close to $200...used they can go for $50 to $100 easily. So, hopefully this information can spare you from this situation. The pictures tell the story....

jrprich

Wow, that does suck !

Does anyone have a link to how to replace the OEM bulb with an LED?

MSG C5

Is it plug-n-play or is it more complex like the dash LED conversions?

99mallett

See the little orange doo dad that points to the gear? I broke mine a few years ago while putting on a new shift boot. They aren't available, either.
I wasn't going to buy a $200+ shifter assembly to replace a 50 cent piece of plastic. So now, I have to look forward to my shifter erupting in flames now, huh. Oh well, it doesn't matter if there's a bulb in it since I can't see which gear it's in anyway....

C5FORFUN2

Years in service, poor design???
Mine is a 2001 daily driver with just under 116K and it has no problem with that. My brothers '98 has 212K and obviously more years of service and has never had a problem with that part either. Possibly you have a problem unique to yours??? Never seen that before on a C5.

damilleniumboy

It happened to my 99 a couple of months ago. I haven't had a chance to look at it "throughly" because of college just yet. It does suck when you downshift to a lower gear and try to remember where D is at hehe.

jdot

I shift mine into different gears by "touch." Fortunately my light still works.

Mister Peebody

It is straight plug and play. Remove and replace.

wally2004

Thanks for pointing this out. Dennis has my radio bezel so now would be a perfect time to replace with LED. Always enjoy reading your posts. Great information. Thanks

kennya35

Mine is broke as well and I dont think my bulb works. Havent noticed since the gear indicator broke, I dont look at the shifter anymore!

madmatt9471

What a bummer - Can you load it up with some epoxy to repair it?

I hate the day for when mine breaks!

Thanks,Matt

Danger731

I just reached 100k on my 04 no issues yet..

VETJAZZ

No problems with mine, but who sells the LED?

Todds427

According to the manual it is a standard 194 bulb, so any LED replacement that fits that type of sockets should work. Are these hard to get to? What is involved with replacing the bulb? Do you have to tear the whole consul apart? HELP!

01magnetic01

Yes, you have to take the console and radio bezel off, then pull the shift boot up and be very careful when removing the PRND321, it's got four little tabs that hold it on that break easily(ask me how I know), once you get the selector off, the bulb is right in the middle. Just be really careful with the orange thingy as I almost lost mine when I replaced my light with the LED. I think I used the Vette Essentials instructions to remove the console and shift boot, very good step-by-step.

itzza427

Reading this makes me glad I have a stick!! Og course we stick owners have run into an issue or two over the years!!

egrand333

You can also just take a small flathead screwdriver and carefully pry up the plastic PRND321 piece and remove the bulb with a pair of needlenose plyers.

01magnetic01

Are you serious???!!! Get outta town! you mean I went through all that trouble and all I had to do was pop the gear indicator off with a small screwdriver??!! J/K I was doing a bunch of other stuff at the time too

egrand333

I have done it that way on 3 different c5's and also posted it a couple of times on the forum. Quite a few people replied that it worked great for them, takes all of 3 minutes, and no one broke anything. (learned it from a post here when I first signed up)

flaagan

Chrimmany!

I think I'll be pulling my center console off rather soon and swapping that bulb out for an LED I have handy!