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Led Illumination Question

4K views 14 replies 5 participants last post by  Darkteller 
#1 ·
(this may be considered sacrilege)
Just wondering if anyone here at the world has posted a diy on changing the total dash illumination over to a L.E.D. setup, and if so which vendors and recommended bulbs to use...
thanks, Austin
 
#2 ·
Just so happens yes I have

There's a few biguns and a few small uns needed.
They are a pain in the ass to put in as the rely on pressure to hold them in between the plastic of the socket and the metal contact (can be tight) and polarity is most important => i.e if they are in the wrong way they won't illuminate.
I replaced the indication lights with colored bulbs to match the color of the slide in panel. i.e red bulb for red indication
Also changed all the indicator and 2 very bright white's up top !

LED Lights for Cars | 12v | Super Bright LEDs

The smaller ones are

1 | B8-HP: B8-HP series Instrument LED bulb | $ 2.59 |
B8.5D-BHP: Blue
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3 | B8-HP: B8-HP series Instrument LED bulb | $ 2.59 |
B8.5D-GHP: Green
------------------------------------------------------------
2 | B8-HP: B8-HP series Instrument LED bulb | $ 2.59 |
B8.5D-RHP: Red
------------------------------------------------------------
2 | B8-HP: B8-HP series Instrument LED bulb | $ 2.59 |
B8.5D-AHP: Amber

I think the big bulbs at the top that provide cluster guage illumination are 194's !

Gauge Speedometer Tachometer Measuring instrument Auto part
 
#10 ·
Savannah, quit reading my mind........ lol I actually have seen true blacklight LEDs on a custom harley davidson and they looked awesome.... Thanks for the additional guage information everyone... I bet if you used certain floresce paints the needles would look extra awesome...
 
#11 ·
Yes does work - however if you go white face gauges it doesn't as the whole dial illuminates.
Not sure the marking and numbers on the standard dial will illuminate but a needle painted in fluoro would stand out
 
#13 · (Edited)
No because the bulbs are approximately the same voltage but actually take less power to illuminate than a conventional filament bulb !
And will outlast them by thousands of hours !

I believe that is why when LED's are used to replace some bulbs on our cars we end up with bulb out indications as the power drain is so much less it send s a false signal to the CANBUS indicating the bulb is not illuminated (unless a resistor is installed).
 
#14 ·
I keep wondering if there would be some way to trick the system other than a resistor into not seeing the bulb out.. Does having the resistor system in place just put the same load on the system as the original filament bulbs? I guess what I was saying was, how do we use the LED system to improve the effieciency of the whole, and in turn improve on the original engineering without changing it too much..
 
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