LED lit gauges with clear needles

[HiPoSped]

Last night I finished my LED lighting conversion on my 1G cluster. I wanted to go with a white needle but after scraping the factory orange off, I tried out the needle with no paint and I kind of like it. I was wondering what everybody else thought about it. Im now working on my dash buttons/switches and A/C controls. I have another cluster from my parts car that I'll be converting as well to sell. Would anyone else be interested in the conversion? If there is some demand I'm thinking of offering the service to everyone here on tuners. It can be done on other model cars as well. Sorry the quality of the pictures isn't that great, but it's the best I could get.

 

[turbosax2]

You can try painting the backs of the needles with white fabric paint.

 

[xxraptor660xx]

That looks awesome!! 10/10!

 

[Rex2342]

Tutorials????

 

[HiPoSped]

Yes, I was planning on painting the backs of the needles so the light still lights them up. There are a couple threads here about the conversion but I did mine a little differently. Everyone else that I've seen had used LED strips to light their cluster. I'm working on a TIGHT budget so I went another route. I bought 100 10,000 mcd white LEDs with 100 resistors for $25 shipped on ebay. The LEDs use 3-3.8V each so I used a group of 3 LEDs in series to replace each factory light using the original plastic clips. I simply removed the factory glass bulb from the plastic base it uses and replaced with with my custom LED setup. I'll get a pic of them up soon. That wasn't really enough light so I had to add some more LEDs inside the cluster using individual LEDs (or a small group of them in some areas) and stuck them in with super glue where extra light was needed. I'll take some more pictures tonight so everyone can see what I've done.

 

[DGajre777]

I like blue, but either blue or red would look good.

 

[gsxtasy]

I picked orange, it matches yet is enough contrast to see vividly.

 

[InfiniteGSX]

Tutorials????

Yeah, all over the web.... Seriously people search. Do a search on LED here on the forum, you'll find all the info you need, in fact, browse a few threads down and you'll find the latest that has pictures.

 

[EDM95]

Here you go^
http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=271195&highlight=gauge+cluster

 

[turbosax2]

http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/showthread.php?p=151285324#post151285324



I'm actually in the process of writing the how-to now.

 

[Rex2342]

Yeah, all over the web.... Seriously people search. Do a search on LED here on the forum, you'll find all the info you need, in fact, browse a few threads down and you'll find the latest that has pictures.

I've already read those tutorials. They were all for 2g's. This was the first one I saw that was for a 1g and was curios how he got rid of the orange sorry. WTF?

 

[Street Surgeon]

Looks nice man, do a write up I'd like to see what's going on behind the gauges!

 

[InfiniteGSX]

I've already read those tutorials. They were all for 2g's. This was the first one I saw that was for a 1g and was curios how he got rid of the orange sorry. WTF?

:O Really? I didn't know there was a real strict difference between the two, hell I didn't know there was a difference between any vehicle! Hell I'm doing the exact same thing Turbosax and Dave, and everyone else thats done it on a 2g, on a Chevy Cavalier. Don't tell anyone that the gauges are that different.

Ok, with all the bs aside. The tutorials that you have read for the 2g, apply for the 1st gen also. Same methods! Read the Tutorials, It is a VERY simple modification.

 

[HiPoSped]

Ok, here's the update on my project. I took a few more pictures showing how i performed some of the work. Using the factory light locations allows me to take advantage of the factory lighting design. Instead of installing TINY smt LEDs behind each needle, the LEDs in the stock light locations shines the light into the clear plastic backing and into the needles as the engineers had intended. I think if I were to do it again Id use the LEDs in those locations as well as the LED strips as some of the others used here on tuners to illuminate the gauges themselves. This would save a lot of soldering that I did. And the inside of the cluster is a little messy with wires and single LEDs. OK, here are the pictures I promised....

 

[InfiniteGSX]

The way your doing it, what about hot spots? I did it that way on my Accord and there were tons of hotspots. I had to work on it for a while to get led's pointing in the right direction to eleminate as much as possible.

 

[HiPoSped]

Sorry the pics are so big, next time I'll resize them even smaller.

Anyways.... When I first tried to light up the cluster with only the stock bulbs replaced with LEDs the gauges were only about half lit, thats when I decided to add the single LEDs wired up inside. Once I glued them in (pretty much the same way everyone else placed their LED strips) I lit it up and it looked great. No more work needed. BTW I also just took some 150 grit sand paper and just sanded the backs to get the orange off. No need to make it smooth with fine paper and sand multipul times.

 

[95CarbonEclipse]

Hey... they way you installed those led's into the bulbs... did that require you to still 'wire' the leds up to the power source (with actual wire)? Or, by doing it that way did you simply have to install the LED mounted bulb housing into the cluster and make sure the that the LED ends were in contact with the clusters original 'brass' circuitry? (Does this question even make sense to you?)

 

[HiPoSped]

I understand you're question. When I removed the factory glass bulb from it's plastic base. I simply fed the LED leads through where the factory glass bulb leads where bent them down, and clipped off the excess. If I can find a better camera I'll take some more detailed pictures. If you do this you WILL need to add extra LEDs to light your gauges. The main reason I did it was to illuminate the needles.

 

[95CarbonEclipse]

^^^ So, you're saying that you can use the brass circuitry as a power source in this case, correct?