REVscene Automotive Forum - converting your entire dash to LED

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converting your entire dash to LED

Has anyone done this? I mean doing the entire knobs and instrument panel /cluster. how hard is it to do? Cheers

I did it in my old car, including my cluster, window/lock switchs etc. Difficulty depends on your experience+how easy it is to get to the boards/current lights. My car was pretty basic, just pop out the old lights, then solder in a resistor/led in place of each one, took some testing to make everythign fit back in. Also found SMDs work great.

Heres the guide I followed, but it will be drastically different for your car I'm betting.

http://www.newtiburon.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=145569

I have also done LED dash lights. I find that they tend to 'spot' a bit more than a standard bulb so you need to get crafty where you place them and use more than you think you may need.

^ smokey style (not totally clear) scotch tape works wonders. a couple well placed layers behind my HVAC screen, clock, and mileage thing spreads the light out evenly.

Of course this won't work for every application, for my HVAC buttons, instead of using 4-5 like Hyundai did, I had to use about 15, one for each place light was needed.

Its time consuming to do it all and some switches don't like coming apart but all the above tips are great.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2564/img1023d.jpg

I've done the cluster in my old del sol and this is how it turned out.

^Damn that looks good

thnx for the advice guys. ill look into this some more after my midterms. question: where did you guys buy your LED bulbs? or any bulb for that matter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jgresch (Post 7317284)

Quote:

Originally Posted by orgasm_donor (Post 7317277)

I have also done LED dash lights. I find that they tend to 'spot' a bit more than a standard bulb so you need to get crafty where you place them and use more than you think you may need.

I have a massive number of LEDs in my car, the trick to getting them to diffuse the light well and not spot is sanding the them down with a dremel. If your still having trouble getting the light to diffuse, try adding a piece of computer paper in front of them, that works very well in climate control knobs and gauge clusters which are notorious for spotting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by epicbeardman (Post 7322645)

thnx for the advice guys. ill look into this some more after my midterms. question: where did you guys buy your LED bulbs? or any bulb for that matter?

Ebay, myself and many members of civicforums have all bought the least expensive 3mm, 5mm and SMD LEDS you can find on Ebay and I've never heard of an issue.