dude 20 hours is still 20 hrs. i love my truck and car, but they are by no means my first hobbie or corncer. if i can get a way with a drop in led i will...even if i have to replace one every once in a while.

still as i said, the ones you and others have done (for me) are way to bright at times, the others do not seem as intense.

 

Yeah, I've got pretty much no life besides my job(s) (painting/body/tuning) and my work... so you can see that all my time is spent working on these kinds of projects.

 

Tip, you don't need to unhook the headlight/dimmer unless you want to. You can pop the bezel out then roll it counter clockwise, it will sit vertical off the floor out of the way.

Benefit is that you don't scratch the plastics on the column or on the bezel itself.

Awesome write up, btw.

 

I know those type of led's are fairly cheap from the superbrightled.com site, i bought my dad some stuff from there when we did the engine clow kit on his harley... where else is everyone getting theses?

 

To do the SMD LED Strip shouldn’t take 20 hrs, now that a few people have done it.
Even with Bulbs you need to clean off the paint on the back of the Gauge Faces to get the best results, so you still have to take the whole thing apart.
I would guesstimate an extra hour, all steps are the same, except running the strip around the inside of the Housing.
No Biggy.
And remember the DIMMER SW still works with LEDs, maybe nno the low, low light but it dims the LEDs as bulbs and the LEDs are not as bright as the pics when adjusted properly but can be, they can be !

The LED Strip is just another alternative or attempt at making the lighting in the Dash Cluster more even.

 

I run the ones in the middle. cool white, 5-bulb 220 degree wide angle. NO hot or cold spots. no idea why that guy said theyre horribly uneven. Did he not try it in an actual cluster? Lol. the only reason i didnt get SMDs is cause i wasnt aware of their existence till after i got these . but now i dont feel the need to get smds



here they are at night



i just noticed the 666 for the first time lol

 

more like 45 mins :)

 

I would have definitely gone with a simple plug in LED's, but I wanted it to light up blue. So I went through the sanding and soldering to get exactly what I wanted.

I didn't do the excellent work Jp7 did, it was just soldering LED's to the old bulb connections

 

thats cool. I would have sanded off the green and used a few layers of blue transparent film with wide angle multi bulb SMD plugins in white.

 

i still gotta replace one of the lights in mine lol im too lazy

 

Wow GTS that looks killer!

 

x2! nice work!

 

gts nice job man. super crisp. is that a sport trac cluster or a stock one. either way it looks super crisp. also can you supply a link to the leds you used?

 

[QUOTE=Jp7;1673152]I used amber, its pretty close to orange. If you want a really orangish orange you need to go above 600nm, try to find an led that is 605nm. Mine are straight up amber at 590nm. They look much more yellow in this picture but if you saw them in real life colorwise they look identical to an amber "caution" traffic signal.

[QUOTE]

man that looks awesome. how much do those leds cost??

 

thanks dudes. The odo looks ALOT bluer in that pic than it is in real life (Its actually just cool white) but you get the idea.

Yup it's a ST cluster.
link-- WLED-x5 (194 type) Wedge Base bulbs Specifications
If youre thinking of doing this, consider smd plugins too, theyll probably be brighter than what I have if you get ones with at least 5 bulbs. But since I love what I have, I dont care lol

 

you can get plcc's for about 30 cents each if you look in the right places. I used strips of plcc's, but when I do my next cluster I will use individual plcc's.

 

are the plcc's the ones that just plug in to the factory slot on the cluster or the ones u have to solder in??

 

I went ahead and bought a package of these lights to install in my heater controls as a tester and I am very pleased with them and will be doing the rest with them.

Sorry for the blurry pictures, my camera doesn't like taking pics in the dark with no flasher on. But you still see the difference.

Before. (one bulb is dead)


With only 1 bulb in


With Both Bulbs In

 

Mmmmmmmmm green.

Looks nice!

 

PLCCs are the kind that are really really tiny. You glue them down where you want them and solder them individually. It is labor, and time intensive. This is the method OEMs use today. (well on a pcb, not glued to the backing) It is the brightest and most even distributed method hands down. You can also go away from the factory green. It requires patience, time and skill.

 

I've tried to use the left ones in the 1st picture in my hvac control area, but those did not fit the little blue turn locks at all, so if i want to use and LED there do i have to solder my own in?, and are those the same bulbs in my instrument cluster also, I dont feel the need to take everything apart and then be disappointed once more because the ones i bought do not plug and play.

 

which bulbs did you get?

 

SMD LEDs FTW!!!!!!

 

I used the White 194 168 T10 SMD 5-LED.

 

I don't feel like reading this whole thread. Was there a certain place I can buy these from?