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10 dollar 10 minute gauge mod


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  • 3 weeks later...

so i found out something interesting today, i was taking the interior out to get at the carpet to dye it, and in the process realized how easy it was to take the 4eat shifter apart, and figured i would let you guys know that the bulb for that is the neowedge 74 i think. its the same as the 4 larger dash leds. if you did the swap then you should have an idea of what i am talking about (i did it a while ago i just cant remember the number) anyways, i had a 90 degree neowedge laying around so i just threw that in, we will see how it looks at night but i would suggest if you change the color of your 4eat shifter that you would go with the 120 degree or the high powered one. the 90 doesn't spread the light too well. it was bothering me that everything else was red and that was green though, so its good enough for now. sorry if i was rambling. jetlag has been raping me the last few days.

 

edit: i can't understand myself very well. CLIFFNOTES! 4eat shifter bulb number is neowedge 158! i would suggest using the 120 degree bulb or a high powered one to better spread the light!

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Thanks. I think when I order more bulbs I might try getting white ones and see how they look. I'd like to get my defrost button to light up and the red portion of the temp controller. I popped one of the buttons off and shined a light through it and they don't seem to have the stupid green tint the gauges are plagued with so I think I could get away with white and actually have white buttons.
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ya if you do blue leds then the red wont show up and if you do red leds then the blue wont show up. so if your gonna do white, post pics so we can see how it turned out. oh and the hvac doesnt have the green tint, you are correct, just the gell caps over the bulbs.
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Will do.

 

Out of curiosity has anyone tried and had any success putting one of the LED elements into the body form one of the incandescent 3mm bulbs? One bulb in the HVAC is longer than the other two and I think that if the bulb/LED could be swapped it would light the buttons a lot more evenly. Just a thought.

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OK, so here's a taste of what actually white gauges look like. I screwed up though and didn't get the fuel gauge completely cleaned up, but it's a good comparison for before and after. I put some mixed white LED's I had laying around in to see what it would look like and I like it. The blue looks better too now that I got the green gunk off the back of the gauges. It's more vibrant and not so dull.

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on the inside of the buttons i did it but i just scratched it off with a tack and it looked crappy on the back but the light gets thru fine on the front and it doesn't look messed up. i'm still hesitant to scratch up the gauges though, even if its on the back. dunno why
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the logos for the buttons weren't even a centimeter tall, at that point i didn't care. lol. i sanded the back of my gauges down tonight and it looks GREAT. sandpaper was an awesome idea.

 

i had my gauges apart though and for SOME reason i set them on the couch (fail, i know) and ******* sat on them :unamused: i broke the rpm needle but superglued it back together, so that worked out alright, but i noticed that my fuel gauge doesn't seem to be working now. i'll have to drive it around tomorrow to double check the temp is working as well. semi concerned about that but i'm sure i can pick up a new gauge from upull it.

 

edit: temp works, fuel doesn't, tach stopped working while i was watching it. GAH :spin: did anyone else have gauges stop working? oh and my battery is dead too. the last 12 hours of driver, car relations have not gone well.

 

everything is fixed. yay

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So here's my white HVAC controls. I used the high power LEDs this time.

 

I also put some white high power ones in my dash switches, but I'm not very impressed with the way the light reflects around inside them. I'm going to have to play with it. I also scraped the green color from the back of the switches so I may put the blue LEDs back in and see how they work. The regular ones might give more light out to the sides than the high power ones. I'll try them here at some point and post my comparison. There's to many variables to guess which will work better.

 

I also put LEDs in to replace the bulbs for the "on" indicators in the switches, and they are horrible. Incandescent bulbs are way better. I may try modifying the LEDs so the LED shines to the side instead of the end of the bulb (cut away glue/plastic etc.) and see how that works. I've had three of the bulbs burn out on me now so I'd like to go all LED, but I may have to stick with bulbs if I can't get good enough light.

 

I succeeded in making a "long" LED bulb for the HVAC. I think it helps. Just cut the glue around the base of the LED and unwrap the wires and the LED will come out of the base. Then drill out the old base a little way (there is a cross support inside that keeps the LED from seating all the way down) put the LED in the old base.

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the white on the hvac and the blue on the gauges looks real good. make it look more "modern". as for the switches, you said it looked horrible. did you use 90* or 120*? also can you post pics of the switches so we can see what youre talking about?
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I used the high power LEDs for the switches; don't have the option of degree angles. Basically they suck because they shine the light out the end of the LED, where as with incandescent bulbs the light sines out the sides too. The amber indicators that show a function is ON need the light coming directly from the bulb. Not enough light gets bounced around in the switch to really illuminate the slit in the switch. I tried to get a picture to show just what they look like but I can't get the picture to accurately represent what they are like in real life. The attached picture is the best I could get. If nothing else, it shows that the light is not even at all. Basically, you have to look directly at the switch to see anything very bright (especially in the day). If you have a direct line of sight to the top of the LED (looking at the side of it) it's bright enough, but any other angle you can't really tell the switch is on.

 

I'll play around with it. I can try and modify the bulb, or try and put some reflective material in the inside of the switch to direct the light outward when I get time.

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