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swgn

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After taking my gauges apart for a clean I realised quite a few bulbs had blown and the bulb behind the big red warning light was missing altogether.

 

So I got myself some goodies in the mail from superbrightleds

 

201301-dash1.jpg

 

1x WLED-x6: 194 LED Bulb - 6 LED Wedge Base, WLED-G6: Green

1x WLED-x6: 194 LED Bulb - 6 LED Wedge Base, WLED-A6: Amber

2x WLED-x6: 194 LED Bulb - 6 LED Wedge Base, WLED-R6: Red

1x WLED-x6: 194 LED Bulb - 6 LED Wedge Base, WLED-B6: Blue

4x WLED-x5: 194 LED Bulb - 5 LED Wide Angle Wedge Base, WLED-NW5: Natural White

 

Coloured bulbs look like this. Each 'bulb' has 6-LEDs set at a narrow angle to direct light straight out of the cluster:

 

201301-dash2.jpg

 

For the four natural white 'bulbs' I chose to use wide angle versions to cast the background gauge lighting. These have 5-LEDs, one bulb directing light vertically, with four others casting wide light:

 

201301-dash7.jpg

 

Fitting is very simple once you have the cluster out.

 

201301-dash3.jpg

 

Though I found that after taking everything apart to clean the gauges and glass and then putting it all back together again that the LEDs for the tacho background lighting didn't fit through the holes. As you can see, the 'bulb' is bigger than hole. So apart it came and I fitted the 'bulbs' from the reverse side.

 

201301-dash4.jpg

 

All sorted and small wiring harness reinstalled. I am missing one bulb holder (bottom right), will source one of these later when I do a full cluster restore.

 

201301-dash5.jpg

 

All installed and tested. Lights are much brighter - though not too much so.

 

201301-dash6.jpg

 

Red warning light lights up properly when the handbrake is on, though it never quite extinguishes when the car is running. Very dim, yet still there. Thinking it could be a bad ground or something, another thing on the list to check later.

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Ok question. I just tried the same thing in my e30 and failed big time. Ended up burning out the circut board for the lights. LEDs care about polerity where as regular bulbs do not corect? I think that I put one of the LED bulbs in the wrong way whitch created a short and burned out the board. It was the T10 12v LEDs that gave me the problems. There are three of them.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006R34PB4/ref=oh_details_o03_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The rest of the light are all T5 LEDs and I had no problem with them. Just twisted in and lit up.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AR1KLMO/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This whole LED thing is very new to me. Any recomendations, or DIYs I could read to better understand this?

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11 hours ago, grizzlebar said:

what does your cluster look like at night? Did the white LEDs make a difference?

 

Absolutely made a difference. Backlighting is brighter and more consistent , though not distractingly so. Doesn't seem to impact my night vision. Made sure I picked slightly "warmer" natural light bulbs rather than blue/white LEDs. 

 

Only thing I'd change would be to get less powerful bulbs for the turn signals (green) and hi-beam dip (blue) as these might be a bit too bright at night and are often lit. Fine in daylight. I don't mind the other warning lights being bright as I hopefully won't see them much ??

 

SuperBrightLEDs now seem to have some better and more compact designs using SMD rather than the LED ones I used when I did this. 

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