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Gauge Cluster LED Source and Warning

S

Savior

CEG'er
Joined
Dec 6, 2002
Messages
306
Location
Honolulu, Hawaii
People keep asking me about where I got the bright vivid LED's for my gauge cluster and HVAC panel, so here's what I told one person, and a bit of my personal experience to save you from the pitfall of those bright "hot spots" in your gauges...



For your courtesy floor lights and the HVAC panel:
Go to http://autolumination.com/194.htm and scroll down to the "194 168 W5W 2825 Super Wide Angle Superstar Bulbs". These are what I have, but I am about to order a different set though, because these ones, althought they say they are "wide angle", aren't really all that wide-angle; they light up the areas right in front of them brighter, sort of creating bright, round "hot spots" in my gauges. So I am going to order a set of the ones towards the top of that page, the ones that have like 5 LED's in them, facing in all different directions. Also much brighter. I think these will be much brighter and wider-angle. I also intend to spraypaint the inside of my gauge cluster housing crome instead of black, I've heard this makes it considerably brighter.



For your actual speedo and tac gauge cluster:
You'll need about 7 (8 for good measure) of the #24's. They are on the page with the 74's, here: http://autolumination.com/74.htm They are about halfway down, and have "#74 too small?... #194 too big?... This is you bulb:" in the description. I am going to buy the "Matrix 5LED Bulb" version of these this time instead of the little single-LED version. They will be so much better I think.



As a side-note, everyone seems to be bent on blue gauges, but I always wanted to see someone go with something wild like red or orange or purple, although I'm willing to bet that if you can't/don't want get yourself a set of custom-colored gauge faces, you could just replace your old incandescent bulbs with those intense green LED's and it would look amazing too. I always thought it would look tropical or foresty or maybe super-techno. I would look really cool in a Tropic Green tour with the tan interior.

Well that's my advice and two cents. I hope this helps clear up the air on this subject a bit and makes peoples' gauges look all the better.
 
do you have any pics of the singe led version that you got ? im assuming you went with super white color?and there just direct swap into those twistlocks?
 
it's been a long time since I read the info, but if I get a set of allready white faced SVT gauges, will I still be able to scratch off the green film so I can do blue LED's?
 
you can but you have to be extremely careful because the film also helps prevent light coming through the white face. this means you have to scrap off just the areas you want light coming through, or find a good way to recover the back of the gauge to prevent light coming through.

its not an issue with the black gauges because the light doesnt bleed through the black faces.
 
replacing just those 2 bulbs with LEDs will not provide the lighting you are looking for. it will end up with 2 hot spots right where the bulbs are and be dark every where else. this is what I had to do in order to help eliminate the hot spots (and there were still some but at least everything was lit.

100_0855.jpg


those are 6 Matrix style 194 bulbs from autolumination.com


now the camera always makes the hot spots from LEDs looks worse than they actually are, as they were not nearly as bad as this picture makes them look. it was only slightly brighter where the LEDs where instead of the 2-3 times as bright like the camera makes them look.
100_0861.jpg
 
ugh soldering to the back of those hvac panels is such a pain. Mine is damn near melted haha. I wish someone would make a twist in bulb base with leads to solder to. That would make things much easier to return to stock if necessary.
 
you could just solder to an empty 194 base. there isnt much room though so it would be difficult.
 
So I decided to do my gauge light mod today with the Matrix 5LED Bulb (#74 too small?.....#194 too big?.....This is your bulb)
I went to put the cluster back and make sure the lights work b4 I button it all back up, and low and behold... They don't work. The only lights that do work are the CEL,SeatBelt,Turn SIgnal's, and so on. WTH? Am I missing something here. Should be as simple as plug and play correct? Or did I get the Wrong bulb? They have so many sheesh...
These are the ones I got...
24_matrix_b_wm..jpg
Or should I have gotten these?
24_ss_b_wm..jpg
 
those wont work without figuring out a way to remove 1 contact from each side of the base (and not the same contact but the opposite contact). so if looking at one face of the base with the bulb up, you would need to remove either the left or right contact (lets say left for this discussion). once you do that you would need to turn the base over to the other side (again with the bulb still up) and remove the left contact on that side as well. this must be done as the bulb holder has a contact plate that covers one face of the base. without removing half of the contact from the bulb you would be providing shorting the circuit by having power and ground on both contacts. this is why i recommend the bulbs with wire legs (like the second one pictured just above) as you can simply bend the legs to stay on their own side of the bulb.

like this


8-31-2007012.jpg
 
petar_velichkov said:
I know its been a while and only few people follow this thread , but i just bought 4 pairs ( 8 bulbs ) of ebay for less than $15 shipped from Hong Kong I believe . This is much cheaper than $7 a piece from that website.

Here is a link if somebody is interested : http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200647913173#ht_2238wt_1165

BoOgIeMaN_SE , if you still follow this , did you make yours work ?
Click to expand...

Yes I did get my cluster to work, but after spending too much money on the same kind of bulbs your looking at! As striker2 said you have to try and remove the contact points on both sides. The problem with that is there is a circle piece of metal in between the contact points that holds the contacts together that cannot be removed. I found this out the hard way. I tried any and everything to get them to work, and come up with nothing but fuses popping left and right. Go with the ones with the little wire legs. I did and I love it. No Mo problems.
 
petar_velichkov said:
so how come the guy from the first post said that those work (the ones i ordered)
Click to expand...

he didnt. :shrug:

he said he was going to buy the Matrix 5-LED bulbs but hasnt posted anything else about them. also, autoluminations version should use the little wire legs that you can bend to stay on one side of the base. the ones you bought do not, instead they use tinned contacts on both sides of the base that can be extremely difficult to remove (if you even can).
 
Yes , these are the ebay ones :) . I haven't got rid of the green film yet , but i am about to . I will post a new pic when it is completely done !
 
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