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As in all my other cars I have decided that I'm not satisfied with the color of my interior lighting. It's a nice my-Japanese-economy-car-is-just-like-everyone-else's green, with pale orange gauge needles. My favorite lighting schemes are white backlighting with red needles or blue backlighting with red needles, but since the back of the gauge faces are tinted green, turning them white is far more trouble than it's worth, so I went with the blue and red scheme. My inspiration is the lighting in the new Volkswagens:



Today I ordered some blue LEDs from Superbrightleds.com to replace the backlighting in the gauge cluster. In the past I used their products and was reasonably happy with the results, but there were lots of hot spots on the face of the gauges because the LEDs were directional. This time I discovered that they have a new "bulb" assembly that has one LED facing forward and five aiming out the sides, so the light distribution should be better this time around. They should be here early next week.

The next step was to change the color of the needles. When I was at the junkyard today I snagged a needle from an open gauge cluster to experiment on. I have now successfully changed the color of the needle to bright red.

Here are my tools: a pen light, the needle, electrical tape, and a red sharpie.



I stuck the needle on the end of the pen light using the black electrical tape, to simulate the light from the gauge cluster:



Here it is lit up in its stock form:



After that I colored it very carefully with a fine point red sharpie:



Here it is lit after coloring it. Since my camera is horrible at exposing in the dark, the actual color of the needle is very washed out. It glowed the color that it reflects on the counter below it.




Once the LEDs arrive I will do this to the needles already on the gauge cluster. My only concern is whether the blue backlighting will give a good red color. If not, I'll rig up some red LEDs directly behind the needles.

I think you'd be better off using regular bulbs with coloured condoms than LEDs.

Interested to see how this goes tho.

Im working on an interior/trunk lighting scheme thats gonna use LEDs

I've done it before in another car and neither option was perfect. The bulbs with blue condoms were not bright enough blue to overcome the green tinting behind the gauges, and so it came out a teal/turquoise color. The LEDs gave out a nice blue color, only tinted slightly by the green, but they had hot spots on the gauge faces where the light was brighter because the LEDs were directional. I'm hoping it'll be better this time because I found the wide angle LEDs for better light distribution, but we'll find out. I'll definitely post the results though.

Cool. I don't like the green either, but figured with the green tinting that a solution wouldn't be worth the effort. Same with the ugly orange in the old GLs, though I changed that to red. The green lighting is supposed to be very easy for the eye, but who cares? I really love the red lighting in my Mazda3. The outer ring of the gauges also turns blue when the headlights are on.

Yeah, I know the green is supposed to be easy on your eyes, and I know that blue is not, but when I'm driving I very rarely look at the numbers anyway, I just care about the position of the needles. Since the needles will be red (the easiest on your eyes) I figure I can deal with the blue.

I actually like the green. But I agree with you Steve, the 80's Soobs have a barf orange to them, and it's most unpleasant.

subyluvr2212 wrote:I actually like the green.

This is definitely the nicest green I've found in a car yet. Just not my favorite color overall.

I'll write something good about this soon, but I tried and had some issues with leds and other stuff. maybe within a couple days

I picked up the plastic stripping I needed to do my interior lighting mod

I also found and ordered a bunch of 1 amp 3.3V regulators on digi-key that run on 11-16v

I'll let you know how they work, it'd be a lot better than trying to use resistors.

I'll have results soon too... the LEDs arrived today, I haven't had a chance to install them yet though.

Keep in mind that these LEDs are designed to be direct replacements for the OEM bulbs, and you don't need resistors.

Here's what they look like:

oh thats kinda cool

They're a little bit expensive, but for what you get I think it's worth it. It was $17 shipped for two 194s and four 74s, which should do the whole gauge cluster.

Thats not that bad, I cant wait to see pics

Hopefully tomorrow. I was planning on doing it today but I ran out of light before I had a chance to start.

you DO know that the gauges have a green tinge in the glass they're made of, right?

LaureltheQueen wrote:you DO know that the gauges have a green tinge in the glass they're made of, right?

she's right... the black plastic piece w/the speedo #'s and whatnot are tinted green on the back somewhere.... i tried to change the color one time, and i took off the bulb condom and put the bulb back in to see if it lit up clear.. but it was still green. i even tried rubbing it with brake-clean to see if it would take off the tint on the plastic piece, but it still didnt work

LaureltheQueen wrote:you DO know that the gauges have a green tinge in the glass they're made of, right?

jnorion wrote:I've done it before in another car and neither option was perfect. The bulbs with blue condoms were not bright enough blue to overcome the green tinting behind the gauges, and so it came out a teal/turquoise color. The LEDs gave out a nice blue color, only tinted slightly by the green, but they had hot spots on the gauge faces where the light was brighter because the LEDs were directional. I'm hoping it'll be better this time because I found the wide angle LEDs for better light distribution, but we'll find out. I'll definitely post the results though.

Splinter wrote:

LaureltheQueen wrote:you DO know that the gauges have a green tinge in the glass they're made of, right?

jnorion wrote:I've done it before in another car and neither option was perfect. The bulbs with blue condoms were not bright enough blue to overcome the green tinting behind the gauges, and so it came out a teal/turquoise color. The LEDs gave out a nice blue color, only tinted slightly by the green, but they had hot spots on the gauge faces where the light was brighter because the LEDs were directional. I'm hoping it'll be better this time because I found the wide angle LEDs for better light distribution, but we'll find out. I'll definitely post the results though.

Still, it'll likely not work very well. Especially with the red that he was talking about. Red and green are opposites on the color wheel

I think that's why he's planning on only turning the needle red.

They'll cancel each other out and he won't have any light at all!

The green isn't a tint, it's the plastic color.

You guys are all half right. The green tint on the gauge face is not terribly strong, so it's not hard to overcome it using LEDs. In the past I've found that red is actually affected a lot less than blue. The problem is that LEDs are directional lights, but the way the plastic light diffusion plates work requires light out the sides of the bulbs as well. The larger size LED bulbs that I bought have seperate LEDs shining out the sides, so they work just as well as incandescent bulbs, but the smaller ones don't. This causes "hot spots" (brighter areas) on the gauges when they're lit up because the light doesn't diffuse properly, and it tends to not light the needles as well unless there's an LED directly behind them.

Today I pulled the gauge cluster, installed the blue LEDs, and colored the needles red.

Here are the actual LED bulbs close up:


They are designed to fit directly in as replacements for the OEM bulbs.

Here is what the needles look like colored red:


Here is what the cluster looks like with red needles and lit up blue (and what the final result will look like when I'm done):


Unfortunately the blue light did end up being to dim to properly light the needles, so I will have to go back and add some direct backlighting for them. The needles are slightly more visible than this picture shows, but they are way too dim for normal safe driving. You can also kind of see the hot spots in the blue.


Tomorrow I'm going to hit up Radio Shack for some red LEDs to put behind the needles. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do the work tomorrow also, but no guarantees.

Is everyone satisfied now that this can work?

I just noticed that the Drive light on the shifter indicator (the ones in the gauge cluster, not down by the shifter itself) doesn't turn on at all anymore. All the others work fine. I wonder if I disconnected something or if it is tied in with the buzzer circuit, which I cut while I had the cluster out.

Very nice!

It does look good. I'm impressed.

"I does look good, I'm impressed". (Laurel said). Laurel didn't just make a spelling /grammar error did she? It is still morning on the west coast so maybe she was just admiring herself in the mirror. Those lights do look good, nice craftsmanship.