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Gauge cluster color chagne, interest

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I still don't understand why the bulbs need to be sent to you though. This is the process I have in my head of what should be happening:

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I remove faces and send them to you.

You remove green film and send them back to me along with LED's.

I remove bulbs and reinstall faces and LED's.
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What am I missing here?

Any way you want to do it is fine, I'm totally flexable. I'm just saying, generally the stock light bulb doesn't come out as a unit, it breaks up. You need the pink base to install the LED into.
 
Do you have any clusters you could use as a core? You could ship out your core and then have people send theirs back, after they had paid of course. Also, more pics would be great. I'm very interested in Red.
 
I have a core, but it doesn't have a tach on it. If people don't care if they have a gigantic speedo for a little bit, I could do that.
 
Any ideas on when you are thinking about making this official? It's starting to get cold out and I'm antsy to remove my indiglos.

Also, I've been reading any and all faq's on changing the bulbs and I now understand what you meant by taking out 5 unnecessary bulbs, having you fit them with the led's, and then swapping them into the main bulb areas. Sorry about the confusion!
 
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Any ideas on when you are thinking about making this official? It's starting to get cold out and I'm antsy to remove my indiglos.

Also, I've been reading any and all faq's on changing the bulbs and I now understand what you meant by taking out 5 unnecessary bulbs, having you fit them with the led's, and then swapping them into the main bulb areas. Sorry about the confusion!


After I figure out where I left my car last night :)crazy:), I'll snap some night pics and start the official GB.
 
Just wanted to chime in a bit here...

This is not even close to being the same as the S&H faces!

He is going to modify the stock faces you currently have by sanding them... and believe me, this is a BIG PITA!

I sanded the original gauges I messed up while doing the S&H faces, and it sucked!

If you check our posts at the following link, you'll see what needs to be done to make LEDs fit:
Different Bulbs and the Different Clusters

Also note that Matt is a mod! heh, just wanted to call ya out!

EDIT: just an update to my post in the old forum...

I tried out the 360° LEDs in the cluster, and it's as bright or dimmer than the stock incandescents.

Now, I tried the 1 Watt LEDs I have lying around... OMG, they put out so much light that the entire cluster was evenly lit! Not hijacking the thread, but this is what LEDs look like:

BTW, if you wanna know how it is to sand the guages, look at my following pics! See how light shines thru where you sanded?

Stock incandescent (notice that the fuel guage isn't lit up, for some reason it's light isn't on the same circuit as the other lights):


6-LED replacement (photo is also in the thread linked above, this is installed in the car and running currently):


1 Watt LEDs (the 100MPH area is dim b/c there is no lamp behind it. I only have 4 LEDs, and there are 5 holes... using 5 LEDs in series would undervolt them, and they'd be dimmer. You can also see on the fuel guage where I screwed up while doing the S&H faces):


And how I rigged these up (note that the "other" circuit with the holes drilled thru the cluster are the "360°" LEDs):


Notice the crazy wiring... to do the 1W LEDs, you'd need to calculate how many you would need to be able to drive them off 12V. With the Superbrightleds.com 1W's, I calculated that 4 would be able to handle about 15V (3.75V each). Adding a 5th LED will allow 18.75V, which will severely undervolt them, making them dimmer... Now that's not always a bad thing; Undervolting them increases the lifespan, just as overvolting them decreases the lifespan.
 
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Well if he can make them look like that preview pic he posted, I'd be happy.

That's what I'm sayin... he obviously has mad skillz.

Note that it took me a couple hours just to get all the green off, and that's what I ended up with... needs touchup paint or something to block the light thru the face, then it'll be all good...

But for my 1W project, clear = too bright!

Oh, and you can't tell the difference during the day, they look totally stock, even my screwed up one:



And Matt, WTF UV? LOL
 
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So I won't clutter the official GB, I'll post stuff about the LED's in here. BDK, I dig the 1W LED look, and I was looking at what you were saying about 5 LED's being underpowered.

I was looking at the tech sheet for the 1W XLamp LED's on superbrightleds.com and it looks like blue,cyan,green, and white have different forward voltage characteristcs than amber/red. Basically red won't be as bright as the white you used, but will still be working almost optimally with 5 bulbs @ 2.4V each in a series configuration. Also, BDK, did you put a resistor on the line of LED's? I know they come with their own little pcb but I didn't see anything about resistors put on it. What do you reccomend for that?
 
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Matt, a couple questions for you.

In the pictures in the Group Buy, I noticed all the red looks perfect but a couple things that had me thinking today when I was driving. What happens in the sections like the Km/H? It's so small that I would think it's near impossible to remove the green from there. Do you just block it off so it's black at night instead of green? Same for the letters like MPH, Km/H, the gas pump symbol, "Premium Fuel Only", etc.

Nevermind - I think I answered my own question. I remember in my attempt to change the color, when the green filter is still on the gauges, none of the red light actually came through. So basically, if areas are left with the green filter, it will just be black, not green.
 
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I forgot to mention I have silver overlays on those gauges. The overlays don't have the cut out for the KPH. Anything that lights up green will have the green removed from it.
 
So I won't clutter the official GB, I'll post stuff about the LED's in here. BDK, I dig the 1W LED look, and I was looking at what you were saying about 5 LED's being underpowered.

I was looking at the tech sheet for the 1W XLamp LED's on superbrightleds.com and it looks like blue,cyan,green, and white have different forward voltage characteristcs than amber/red. Basically red won't be as bright as the white you used, but will still be working almost optimally with 5 bulbs @ 2.4V each in a series configuration. Also, BDK, did you put a resistor on the line of LED's? I know they come with their own little pcb but I didn't see anything about resistors put on it. What do you reccomend for that?

No resistor... if you use the right number of LEDs, you won't need a resistor since all 4 LEDs (in my case) in series will use up the voltage. If you put 5 LEDs in there, all 5 will be dimmer than if you put 4 in.

Resistor calculator if you are going to use less LEDs than the voltage you're going to apply to the circuit (like in the case below, say 1 1W LED being powered by 12V for your door panel lights). If you have 2+ LEDs in series, take the forward operating voltage of the LEDs and add them together. If the sum of the FOV exceeds the voltage you want to apply to them, you don't need a resistor.

Note that Superbrightleds doesn't have the same ones I bought anymore (mine looked more like the Dorados, but the contacts are on opposite sides instead of right next to each other)... So I'll work with those XLamps:

1 White LED:
  • 4.0V forward voltage (5.0V reverse breakdown voltage)
  • 350mA or 700mA operating current (bright/dim I guess)
So armed with that, if you put 4 of those in series, they will be able to handle a maximum of 16V, which is more than likely beyond what they will ever see in a car. If you put 5 in series, they can handle 20V.

However, I wouldn't use 3 in series w/o a resistor... even though they can handle 12V, your alternator normally puts out 14.4V or so. That will shorten the life of the LEDs, plus make them run hotter.

The 1W+ LEDs are mounted to an aluminum heat sink that also has traces and a solder pad to make it easier for you to attach your leads. It also makes it easy to mount as well.

Note that all the "high end" 1W+ (they go up to 5W) are Lumileds Luxeon LEDs... You'll find these in the higher end flashlights and in random other products (I've seen an exit sign with 3 1W in them!).

Oh, and BTW... a "white" LED is just a blue LED with a phosphor coating that emits a yellowish light. Wikipedia
 
Any more tips or things to watch out for while removing the faces?

YES! If you don't peel them off correctly, you'll end up ripping the opaque material off the back of the face, causing light to pass thru.

Look at my fuel guage above in the pics where I sanded the speedometer... that will happen if you don't peel them off properly.

It's about the same deal as when you're trying to remove a sticker, and it leaves parts of it behind.

Now, it's up to Matt to see if he can fix that or not.

Also, think this thread should be moved out of GB to asthetics or so?
 
It is pretty easy to tell if you are getting the gauge or not. The face coming off should be sticky, and you should see clear plastic with clearish-white residue left on it.
 
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