Similar thing happened to me.. I bought 3 switches, hoping to get one with working back lights, but none worked.
I carefully took one switch completely apart. Having the right tools for the job made it easier, so that none of the tabs broke, but also warming up the plastic helps as well.
the bulbs that are in the VT switch could not be purchased from any shop I tried, from auto shops to Jaycar, they had nothing the same..
But I worked out that the T5 bulb will fit, if you carefully bend the wires on the bulb straight, from being wrapped around the glass.
De-soldering the old bulbs (x3) out was easy. Use a 25w soldering iron to prevent any damage. But you will need a solder pump to help remove all the solder from the circuit board so that the small holes that the bulb wires go through are clear - they are extremely small, barely big enough to fit one strand of wire through.
Then put in the new T5 bulb with the straightened wires and solder in. Being a normal bulb, no need to worry about polarity.
The trick is to be careful when you take apart the switch housing. The problem is that there are 2 spring loaded ball bearings in there. If you take it apart and not careful, the ball bearing will fly out with the spring.. lose these and you are stuffed as without them, the switch won't "click" into the positions for the headlight or dash lights to work. Also be careful not to move the other metal parts in the switch which spin around on the main core shaft - as these need to be in a particular position to work as well.
I ended up repairing all the switches I bought, so now have 3 fully working spares..
Jaycar do sell LED T5 bulbs. The only reason I didn't put these in, is that I didn't want to do all the work and then have to undo it all, if the bulb polarity was wrong, as LED's must be around the right way with positive and negative.
