This how-to will show you how to light up a 2g gauge cluster with led's. I thought this looked so clean and so much better than stock that I had to do it! This idea is fully credited to azdave. I have azdave’s permission to write this how-to.
Check out azdave's short writeup at this link (you have to become a member to view the forums): HiDPlanet.com :: Log in
The stock brighness control has handled the LEDS just fine and our cars come with PWM brightness control which is perfect for dimming LEDs correctly.
Now, on to the project!
Goal: To make a sweet looking gauge cluster!
Time needed: Depends how fast you work. It took me nearly a month to finish, but I worked slowly. This can be done much faster than I did.
Materials needed:
1. Flexible led strip (color of choice) - One 38” strip will be sufficient Flexible LED Strips
Can also be found on ebay for cheaper
2. 1206 smt led's - find on ebay
3. 22-24 gauge wire
4. Tiny gauge wire
5. Jewelers screwdrivers
6. Hobby knife
7. Soldering materials
8. Electrical tape
9. Styrene (or anything else you can use, see later on for details)
10. Sandpaper / sanding sticks - varying grits
11. Small files
12. Fork
13. Tons of other stuff you’ll find out you need along the way
1. (This step is not necessary, but may make removal a bit easier.) Remove the upper and lower steering column covers by removing the 3 screws located on the bottom. Tilt the steering column in the down position, carefully separate the covers, and remove them completely.
2. Remove the 2 screws from the top of the gauge bezel.
3. Carefully remove the gauge bezel by pulling straight out on it. (On the bottom, there are 2 clips, marked by the blue arrows.) Use a screwdriver to carefully pry the bezel way from the dash if necessary.
4. Unscrew the 4 screws that hold the gauge cluster to the dash (marked in red). Remove the cluster by carefully pulling straight out on it and remove it from the dash. You will have to tilt the cluster to get it out.
____________________________
Eric
Last edited by turbosax2; 02-22-2008 at 01:55 PM.
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1. Carefully remove the clear plastic cover off the cluster by pressing in on the tabs holding it down.
2. Carefully remove the black housing off the cluster by pressing in on the tabs holding it down.
3. There are little tabs sticking up from the speedometer and tachometer that prevent the needles from going past zero. Carefully “jump” the needles over the tabs and let them swing downwards. Gently flick the needles a few times until they fall to the same place a few times in a row. MAKE SURE to note the position of all of the needles. You can put a piece of tape of the front of the gauge face and mark where the needle is positioned at on the tape. Also, take pictures for your reference later. The needles will have to go back on at the same spots they came off of.
4. Take off the needles using a fork. Slide the needle between two of the teeth on the fork and gently pry upwards. Do this for all of the needles.
5. Now remove the speedometer and tachometer gauge faces by pulling gently up on them. They are held down only by some sticky material on the backs.
6. Turn the cluster over and remove the 4 screws holding the speedometer assembly in the cluster. Remove the assembly.
7. Remove the screws on the little gauges (4 screws per side). Take caution not to strip these screws. Remove the faces and the clear parts underneath them.
Note: 2 of the screws are longer than the other 6 - these screws go in the holes near the oil pressure gauge.
Note: There are pieces for the oil pressure gauge that will fall out once the assembly is removed. See the picture below for how the pieces should go. The gold piece sits on top of the white posts, and the silver piece sits under the white base, and the screws go through the holes in it. Be careful not to lose these pieces. Also, the needle that sticks up may fall out. The best idea is to remove all of these pieces and store them somewhere safe so they don’t fall out when you’re not looking. Just remember how they came out so you can reinstall them properly.
8. Remove the 2 screws over the tachometer clear piece and remove the piece from the cluster.
9. If you want to change the color of your turn signals, remove the 2 green lenses using a small screwdriver. They just pop out.
10. Remove the gauge bulbs (there are 7, easily seen from the front of the cluster) and the 2 turn signal bulbs if you are changing their color. Just twist the bulbs from the back to take them out.
11. Using a small screwdriver, pop out the 2 orange pieces from the speedometer assembly.
When I left the needles alone, after I lit everything up the needles appeared "salmon" instead of orange. We're going to fix that. This is the paint I used - "Fluoresecent Orange Shiny" and "Bright White Shiny" Polymark brand fabric paint.
1. Take all of the orange paint off the back of the needles using a knife and/or sandpaper.
2. Now we're going to repaint the needles. First, you put a semi-light coat of orange on. It is essential to get this coat as even as possible so that the needle is all the same shade of orange when lit. Do not put too much orange on or the white paint in the next step will be less effective. Obviously, only the back of the needle is painted. I used a wedge of tissue to apply the paint. Immediately after you paint the needle, if it doesn't look good, wipe the paint off with a tissue and try again. It took me an average of 5 times per needle to get it perfectly even.
3. After letting the orange paint sit for at least 30 minutes, it's time to put the coat of white on. If you accidentally got globs of orange paint on the sides of the needle you can scrape that off with a knife now. You are going to put a medium coat of white on. The purpose of the white is to brighten up the orange to make it shine more. It is not as imperative you get this coat even, but still try to. I used a toothpick to apply the white paint.
4. Sand the factory yellow tint and black and white gradient screening off of the back of the gauge faces. I started with coarse sandpaper and worked my way up with finer and finer sandpaper until it was all off and smooth. Use a tissue to wipe the crap off. Only the spots where the light shines through the gauges needs to be sanded off.
I started with 150 grit and worked my way up to 600 grit just to smooth the face out. After I installed the lights and checked to see how they looked with the gauge faces on, I noticed several tiny "pinhole" leaks of light on the black parts of the gauge face. I don't know if the leaks were there before I sanded the screening off or not. I fixed these leaks by placing small pieces of electrical tape on the backs of the faces. This didn't affect how the light shone through at all.
These rings are to light up the needles. Without them the needles will not light up at all. I use .010” styrene to make these rings. I know there has got to be something better out there, but this worked for me. You just need something thin enough to clear the needles once it’s installed. Get creative with these rings.
1. Place a gauge on the styrene and trace the circle in the middle of the gauge. You will need to make one ring per needle (6 for a turbo gauge cluster, 4 for n/t). Cut the rings out using scissors. Check to make sure the ring can fit inside the hole in the gauge. Trim as needed.
2. Now you’re going to use a knife/file/whatever to make a hole in the middle of the ring. I’m making so many of these rings that I made a template out of .080” styrene so I get a perfect hole every time. I attach the rings to the styrene with double sided tape and cut out the hole. This may or may not benefit you to make the template.
3. Glue the smt leds one by one to the rings using tweezers to place them exactly where they need to be. They need to be placed so they can be wired in series (note the direction of the green dots).
4. Time to solder the leds together. This is a hard step. Get a piece of metal, put some double sided tape on one side, and set the ring down on the tape. This prevents the styrene from warping out of shape during soldering. Take a piece of 22 gauge wire, fan the wires out, and place them between two smts. Now glob a bunch of solder on the wire and try to get the solder touching the terminals on the smts. Cut the extra wire off when you're done.
5. Solder pieces of wire to two smts to be your positive and negative leads.
A few quick notes:
- The smt's are rated for 3.4 volts. A car runs on 12 volts. What this means is that four of the smt's must be wired in series for them to work properly / not blow up.
- Once you solder the smt's on the rings, it would be a very good idea to immediately check to see if the ring lights up using a 12 volt battery. If the ring doesn't light up, you have a bad connection somewhere. I accidentally found out how to easily check each connection to quickly pinpoint your problem. Set your voltmeter to measure resistance to 200 ohms. Then connect the pins from your voltmeter to either side of the connections on each smt (remember led's are polarity specific so you have to connect the positive wire from the voltmeter to the positive terminal of the led.) If you have a good connection, the led will light up just a little. If you have a bad connection, nothing will happen.
I used a total of 75 led's (6 for the boost/oil gauge, 30 for tachometer, 24 for speedometer, 9 for gas/coolant gauge, and 3 for each turn signal). The strips you buy are wired in sections of 3. This means when you cut your strips off, you can only cut off a number of lights divisible by 3 (ex. 3, 6, 9, 12 etc).
1. Cut the appropriate length strip of led’s from your main strip. Cut off the protective coating at the ends to expose the end terminals.
1. Basically what we’re going to do now is stuff a bunch of lights in the cluster. Start with the four little gauges on the sides, then do the tachometer and speedometer. I used 6 for the boost/oil gauge, 30 for tachometer, 24 for speedometer, and 9 for gas/coolant gauge. So first I did the boost/oil gauge. I found it best to take all of the insulation off the lights so I could position them best for max light distribution. Once you position the lights how you want them, glue them in place and route the wires into the nearest light hole. Now, solder the wires to the flexible circuit on the back of the cluster.
2. Take one of your premade rings and glue it to the clear plastic piece behind the gauge face. Route the wires back and solder them to the flexible circuit. Don’t forget to reassemble the pieces for the oil pressure gauge! Now you just repeat these steps for all of the gauges and reassemble the cluster as you go. Note where I had to cut the clear plastic piece for the speedometer so the lights would fit. Also, now is a good time to adjust the odometer if necessary. (No, I’m not going to tell you how to do this part.)
3. If you want to make your turn signals white instead of green, here is how to. Trace the outline of the green plastic piece onto a piece of 0.030” clear styrene and cut the piece out. Use coarse sandpaper to scuff up both sides of the piece to give it a frosted look. Use a strip of 3 led’s to light the turn signals up. If they are too bright, shove something between the lights and the clear piece to dull them down (ex. wax paper). If you use the stock lights instead of the led's, the turn signals will have a yellowish tint to them.
Now, you should have everything but the needles reassembled. If you got to this point, congratulations!
Here are a few ways to recalibrate the gauges. The most important are the tachometer, speedometer, and fuel gauge. We all know the stock coolant temperature, oil pressure, and boost gauges are far from perfect.
Speedometer: I used DSMlink. Log speed through link and keep the car at a constant speed - use cruise control if you have it. Now place the needle on the cluster at the right spot as your driving. Be careful! This may take a few tries to get right, so never push the needle down all the way until your absolutely certain it’s correctly placed. Other options include using gps devices that can display speeds, or matching speeds with a friend in another car.
Tachometer: Again, I used DSMlink. OBDII tools can also be used.
Fuel: Fill the tank completely, then place the needle at the Full position. You will want to keep an eye on this one for a few fillups to make sure it’s working properly.
Boost: Ya…..just put it somewhere. Who cares? FWIW, I just matched it to another cluster I had.
Coolant: Drive the car around until it’s at normal operating temps, then place the needle directly in the middle of the gauge.
Oil pressure: I used another untouched cluster I had to see where the needle should be, then I placed mine at the same position. The needle was a little above the first mark at idle if I recall correctly.
Well, there it is. It’s taken hard work and patience, but we did it. Now go enjoy those sweet looking gauges!
I apologize if I missed any details in this writeup. You need to use some creativity though, so figure some things out on your own. My methods are FAR from perfect, but it’s what I came up with.
Good luck!!!!!!!!!
Also check out these how-to's to match your nice looking cluster:
How to light gauge cluster with LED's
