LED bulbs in the Gauge Cluster

[boarder211]

Well, I was bored this morning, and being inspired by Mouse's post, I decided to try and get my gauges to become a nice blue colour, and decided to do a how-to on it.
Ahhhhhh... the joys of being bored with nothing to do and crappy weather outside...

Anyways... I'll assume that you can get the gauge cluster off, if not, just do a search.
Once the gauge cluster is off, remove the bulbs "condoms" (I really can't think of a better word for them), and pull out the stock bulbs. They're really hard to work loose, but I've found that holding the base of the condom with a pair of plyers and rocking the bulb pretty hard gets them out relatively quiclky (Allright... now you get your mind outa the gutter and leave it be!)

So here's what my gauges used to look like:

[boarder211]

Now, using the LED's from Oznium (http://www.oznium.com/product_info.php/products_id/29), along with the resistors that they also sell, cut off all but a little bit of the lead on one side of the resistor

[boarder211]

Cut off all but a little bit of the positive lead on the LED, and solder the resistor onto it.

[boarder211]

Now, in order to get the LED's to work with the condoms, I've found that the following shape works the best in order to get good, consistent contacts. One thing as well, you might want to wrap some electrical tape around the wire in between the resistor and the LED. I was testing one LED once I got it into the condom, and the lead got folded over until it was touching the wire between the resistor and the LED... so bye-bye LED. :(

Oh yeah... for testing I used a 9 volt battery that I've taped wires to the + and - leads... makes a really handy tester!

[boarder211]

Now it's just to fit the bulbs into the condoms. One thing I did to make the testing easier was put a + on one side of the condom, where the connections are made. It'll cut down the testing time by about half... :) Here's what the LED now looks like

[boarder211]

Now installing the bulbs is easy, though it does involve a bit of trial and error. As LED's require the correct polarity to work, you have to play with them to see how the polarity is arranged in the cluster. I should have written it down, but I didn't think of it at the time. Don't worry about putting them in the wrong way, because it won't hurt them. But here's a side-by-side comparison of the old bulbs (speedometer), and the LED's (Tach).

[boarder211]

The LEDs look way better IMO, though they do put out a very concentrated beam of light directly above them, so you can see exactly where the bulbs are in the cluster. Oh well... here's the finished product

[boarder211]

And finally, the Dr. J gauges by day (I know that some people have been asking for pics...)

So there we are everyone! If you have any questions, feel free to PM me!

[niral622]

Good job boarder! (edit: boarder was changed from "skiboarder" ;))

To add to this, if you want to evenly spread out the light coming from the LED's, consider using a diffuser for them. I put some of these LED's in my car as "neons" and to diffuse the beam, I took a small piece of aquarium tubing 1/4" diameter i believe and 3/4" long and filled it with hot glue (which is a little cloudy when it dries, we want this). What this does is it dims the direct straight-outward beam and refelects some light sideways (snell's law of physics if you are wondering) just like a lightbulb. I planned on using these the change the gauge cluster bulbs to LED's but never got to it....you can also experiment with other stuff. I have thought about using those clear plastic BIC pens (hexagonal shape), but once again, haven't had too much time for experimenting. If you use the pens, you would probably have to scuff the sides with very course sandpaper to more evenly distribute the light. Goodluck! and PM me if you have any questions...

[boarder211]

Thanks for the compliments man! But it's just boarder... not skiboarder! :)
I'll probably give it a try with the tubes a little later. Right now I realized that I probably should have soldered the leads onto the connectors of the condom, which I think I'll probably get around to on Sunday... because a couple of the LED's flicker out when my subs are thumping. I'll post a couple shots of the re-done LED's/condoms Sunday or Monday....

Thanks for the compliments and ideas!

[niral622]

haha my bad, where did I get the ski from i wonder lol...

yeah solder would probably fix the flicker...keep up the good work :thumbsup:

[AleroSS]

Looks bunnyin sick Scott, nice freakin work, and if you have the chance, see what it would look like with a diff coloured LED back there (perhaps Red :D )

[mouse]

Blue looks sooo good. I tries red too on mine looks good.I like the blue better. If you snip the wires at the bottom of the "condom" the bulbs pretty much fall out. Nice work! :thumbsup:

[bigd6983]

they also make different types of leds, some that shoot the light straight out and also some that shoot it out the sides, they look like they have a square around the led, another solution to the bright spots you got but seriously it looks really good, I want to do that to my needles. I think I saw that they had the housings at kragen but i wasnt sure, give it a try and see if it would work. great job.

[boarder211]

Three things to add here... first off, I tried soldering the leads to the condom's connectors, but for some reason, I was unable to get the solder to stick to the condom's connectors... I really don't know much about soldering, but I was wondering if anyone might know why!

Secondly, I re-made some of the bulbs so that they had longer leads to them... thus allowing to position them better, and remove some of the concentrated light pathways.

Finally, here's the polarity of the respective sockets on my 99 Alero's cluster.

[havik]

From the pics, the olds logo is harder to see. Any idea yet what your going to use to spread the light better?

[Clandestiny Amicatia]

Hey what size resistor are you using there? I cant make out the color scheme enough to tell.

Thx.

Clan

[ptrudel]

that is so bunnyin nice man...good work, and a very helpfull how-to as well

it'll gimme sumthin to think about when my gauges get here

[sound_xtreme]

i did this a looooong time ago. i suggest using 3-5 led's instead of one. and point them in different directions. helps give an even light rather than one really bright part. and i just bought 100 of them off ebay for like 5 bucks and they worked AWESOME. and i wired mine differently....i did mine the same way indiglows would work(tapping into the light switch on the vent). rather than using the stock cluster power. i think that allowed me more room for led's rather than bending the wire in wierd shapes and also allowed me to skip having to deal with the polarity of the stock housing.

also when you cut the lead that short on your led you MUST be fast and careful. or at least you should if you paid a bunch of money on led's. if you spend too long soldering you will toast the led. you should also use the clip on heatsinks to help with that.

[AleroSS]

Hey Scott, would you be willing to help me out, or do a cluster for me with LED's?

[SouthDakotAlero]

I need to know the colors of the resistors as well, since it's hard to tell from the pictures. Can somebody help me out?

[boarder211]

They were red and purple for the center two stripes, and there's a stripe on one end which is a goldish/brown

[bigd6983]

I think its somewhere in the 330 ohm range to make them 12 volt compatibe but they seem a lil too bright so i usually use high 300's to 4......whatever I can usually find in my box, if anyone is curious I went to kragen one time and found what looked to be replacements for the lil sockets in the back of the cluster so if no one wants to have to desolder a stock part and wants to be able to interchange if necessary I would say go there and check it out.

[bigd6983]

oh and boarder it looks like yellow violet brown to me, which is something like 470 ohms its been a while with the conversion chart.

[the_SkoL]

I've lost my old bulb with the "condom" so what alternative I should do? :wacko:

[boarder211]

Well, going on Sound_Xtreme's comment, I replaced each individual LED+resistor with three LED's, and the effects are way better! What I did was take a little tacking nail, and hammer it through the bottom of the condom to create 2 holes which were big enough to pass the wire through them. Then taking the LED's, threw them into series and put the end leads through the holes. This way the leads could be pased back up into the spaces where the stock bulbs came through, and soldered into place to form a nice, tight connection.

[boarder211]

Yeah... I know I'm a crappy solderer. What I would recommend for anyone else who's planning on doing this, is to get a low temp solder, because heating up the connectors on the condom enough to take the solder caused the plastic to melt a bit... but it worked.

[boarder211]

And finally, the final effect. As opposed to 5 LED's, there now are 15 in here. :)

Still haven't figured out a way to spread around the light more, but I'm thinking that they still look pretty nice IMO.

[ptrudel]

looks good...i gotta say tho, u got a hell of alot more patience then i do...good work :thumbsup:

[niral622]

looks hot, tho now i'm going to have to get more blue led's :lol: :thumbsup:

[AleroSS]

Looks good scott, well done - any way to just change the needle's colours without bleeding the light elsewhere?

[boarder211]

Still haven't figured out that one AleroSS... Not too sure other than installing a LED that would sit right below the needle. Because I've been thinking that red needles would look goor with the blue gauge cluster.

[sound_xtreme]

:) hehe, i didnt use the stock gauge cluster like you did tho to power them. i guess just too lazy? anyways i dunno if i mentioned it but i just wired mine into the dimmer switch where most run their indiglow gauges.

[bigd6983]

ok im going to repeat something I said earlier. there are different types of leds, some that diffuse light sideways instead of straight out, those leds would probably be perfect for this mod, now if you have the halo gauges I dont think youd have this problem period because they seem way thicker then the stock ones prolly are and plus you have double thickness.........

[sound_xtreme]

indiglow gauges, and halo gauges dont have any transparent parts i dont think. i know my indiglows dont. so useing the straight led's i could point them straight toward the needles.

[bigd6983]

yea thats what im saying, but for others with stock guages it would be perfect

[FormulaNERD]

ok, quick idea to spread out the light, i'd try it with test led's first though, so you dont waste a 3 led condom if it doesnt work.


take a piece of glass, put a huge glob of hot glue down, stick the led's in it where the light emits, let it cool, pull it off of the glass, cut the hot glue into a circle so that it fits into the gauge cluster, maybe even take some sandpaper to the hot glue, rough it up a bit, should spread out the light at least a little... and it shouldnt take but 3 mins to do this.... so it's pretty much win/win.... on paper anyway.

lemme know if you try this.

oh, and a quick note, if you use 4 leds in series, you dont need any resistors.

[sound_xtreme]

or, you could just grind the rounded part off then sand it with like 2000 grit

[Cuzican]

Thats more work, time and money spent than needed! You get the same effect when you replace the original white bulbs with blue "mood lights"!

[boarder211]

take a piece of glass, put a huge glob of hot glue down, stick the led's in it where the light emits, let it cool, pull it off of the glass, cut the hot glue into a circle so that it fits into the gauge cluster, maybe even take some sandpaper to the hot glue, rough it up a bit, should spread out the light at least a little... and it shouldnt take but 3 mins to do this.... so it's pretty much win/win.... on paper anyway.

Very good idea... I was thinking about something like that, and will probably mess around with it in the coming week. I've got a few days off, but first on the list is clearing my driver's side corner (I did the ps the other day), and re-mounting my fogs. Then I'll be messing more with these LED's... :)

Ahhhh... the joys of a week-long break from summer courses, and it being the slow time at work.

[sound_xtreme]

seriously, just make the end of the led flat, it disperses the light much wider.

[brim]

Originally posted by sound_xtreme@May 31 2004, 04:25 AM
seriously, just make the end of the led flat, it disperses the light much wider.
dremel it down

[sound_xtreme]

yea, i used a bench grinder, hehe. dremel would work tho

[ShortysTRM]

has anyone tried to change the lights behind their HVAC controls (fan, A/C, etc.) to LED's? I haven't the slightest clue what kind of bulbs are back there or anything, so I dunno...

[brim]

Originally posted by ShortysTRM@Jun 11 2004, 04:25 AM
has anyone tried to change the lights behind their HVAC controls (fan, A/C, etc.) to LED's? I haven't the slightest clue what kind of bulbs are back there or anything, so I dunno...
think this was just discussed in appearance, hvac from silent's response, it's soldered

[ShortysTRM]

7 color gauges lol gauges video (http://atabo.com/alerogauge.wmv)

[AlbinoMonkeyRat]

has anybody figured out how to do just the needles yet?

[bjensen83]

They had this kit for about $80 a while back for our cars, but worked on all cars. It sucked, but basically what it was was 4 circle things with tiny led's attached to them. 3 led's for the 2 big needles, and 1 led for each small needle. It came with these extremely thin wires that break easily, and a dimmer switch. Worked pretty cool the first time, but when i had to readjust the speedometer, RPM, and fuel level needles, somehow the water temp led stopped working, I finally took it out since i don't do much night driving, and that dimmer switch was just getting in the way of things. It's definently not worth buying that kit if it's still available. I think it was called indiglo needles??

[-Alero-]

i could of sworn there was just 5 bulbs, 4 bulbs for each needle and one bulb for the PRND123 indicator in the cluster. cant you just replace those with LED bulbs? and arent they 194's

[stealthlero]

if anybody figures out how to get just the needles and the PRND123 in the cluster done let me know cuz I already got halo gauge overlays so i dont care bout the normal gauges

[midnightalero01]

since the main bulbs for the guages are 194's couldn't you just get some nice wide angle 194 led's off this site here and plug em in instead of messing around with wiring normal leds http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/sto...d=6566569.25199 (http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=CAR&cart_id=6566569.25199)

[2fst4u]

i ordered 40 surface mount leds off ebay to try this with. they should spread the light better. the rest of the smd will be used for custom "neons".

[sound_xtreme]

Originally posted by stealthlero@Feb 10 2005, 10:22 PM
if anybody figures out how to get just the needles and the PRND123 in the cluster done let me know cuz I already got halo gauge overlays so i dont care bout the normal gauges
Quoted post


just take out and replace the big bulbs in the gauge cluster.

[ShortysTRM]

Each 194 bulb has its leads soldered into the socket they are in. The sockets are easy to take out and mess with, so if you break the leads on the 194 incandescent bulbs and straighten out the leads on a 194 and insert them into the socket so that the wires can be soldered into the same location as the stock ones, they are a direct replacement. The soldering is not necessary, but I would advise it. I didn't solder April's and we have had to take them out and fix them a couple times. We have the 6 led bulb 194's from superbrightleds.com, but I don't know if I would recommend them. They are bright, but they are very focused and they don't seem to be very reliable. See if ledtronics.com has 194's. We bought white LED's and it ended up light blue with white needles. I don't think red would shine through the blue light filter in the gauges. The lens is blue, but when the stock yellowish bulbs shine though, it produces a faded green. There are 5 bulbs, I believe, and if you already have "halo" gauges and you want different needles, you'll either have to buy the intelliglow needle kit, which is likely what bjensen83 was talking about, or just buy different bulbs for the gauges. Since you have EL guages already, the light shouldn't shine through anything but the needles.

[04alero4dr]

Will this work good with my stock cluster and needles?

[Lovestheh20]

okay so how many 194's are there total in the cluster, I would like to just throw some superwhite bulbs in my cluster and then do the intelliglow kit. I like the black face on the alero.

[Whitetigerboi83]

Originally posted by midnightalero01@Feb 21 2005, 11:47 PM
since the main bulbs for the guages are 194's couldn't you just get some nice wide angle 194 led's off this site here and plug em in instead of messing around with wiring normal leds http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/sto...d=6566569.25199 (http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=CAR&cart_id=6566569.25199)
Quoted post

i agree just go to http://superbrightleds.com under the car bulb section they have the instrument cluster lights there (same ones in the dome light too) musch better then trying to cut soder and fit in the the old(condoms) plus if you ever sell the car and the buyer wants the original stuff (MAYBE) not always true but you still have them then

[doubleN0alero]

anybody know what wrench kinda job this would be....i know talk about thread revival, but its a how-to jamie and i are going to work on here very shortly

[elitecloud]

quick q -

which one is the best led 194 to buy off of http://www.superbrightleds.com/
which one exactly, there are several 194's
i want it disappated so it lights it up , not glared in my eye ...

like a grand am's cluster would look like

[elitecloud]

bump

[cherrington17]

i'd go with with either the inverted bulbs, or the ones that look like 5 led's melted together.

[mykie]

I just bought some inverted-top 194's for my front turnsignals, from ebay (user id: warden_jp2002 ).

So far, I love them, they're very bright (even for a single LED), have the resitors already built-in, and they have that "instant-on" kind of look that I love.

It's nice to know that you can use 194 bulbs for the cluster, because most of the 194's with inverted tips have the resistor built right in, making this mod a WHOLE LOT EASIER.

[mykie]

Does the dimmer have any effect now that you have these LEDs in place, or does it dim to a certain point and then just turn off?

I also bought a 9-led festoon-style dome light from ebay, but it hasn't arrived...i'm curious if I'll still get that nice dome light fadeout like before...

[2fst4u]

the ones that i had in before would dim. but yeah, once they get really faint they shut off. but it's just like a normal bulb. they look good.

[cherrington17]

leds have no problem dimming. it will NOT damage them or cause them to burn out prematurely.

i have led's in my PRND321 strip, behind my vents, and in my door slits, which all dim if i turn the light adjustment up or down. (obviously up causes brighter, down is dimmer)

dome light and gauge cluster is no different...

[scsralero]

i got mine off of superbright leds.com the wide angle ones and i have had mine in for about a year
i have had no problems with them except when i first put them in they would come loose but i was easy enough to fix. so if you are looking to make your ggaugesblue without doing any soddering go with them. i will try to put a picture up tonight. it is a much cleaner look to, i think. I also put them in my prnd123 and that looks good to. oh yeah i also put them in my reverse lights although i ddon'tthink thats compleley leagle but oh well.

[scsralero]

well i hope this works, here are some pics of my gauges i used the 194 wide angle bulbs[attachmentid=9910]

[scsralero]

and also my shift indicator and reverse lights[attachmentid=9911][attachmentid=9911]

[cherrington17]

only thing i don't like is the fact that you can tell where the led's are....

i don't mean that in offense... its just that every led style mod for the gauge cluster i've seen there are distinct darker cirlces where the center of the lights are...

i'd love to do this, but i want it to be uniform....

[scsralero]

oops. here are my reverse lights sorry about that.[attachmentid=9912]

[scsralero]

keep in mind that the pics are off my phone so they are not the best

[XanderWiFi]

Did the pictures disappear or were there none for this post?

[cherrington17]

i had my own thread for this. this one went dead... like... 3 years ago.