I know that there's been DIY's on adding LED lighting to you gauges, but I'm wondering if anyone's ever just tried switching out the stock bulbs with LED bulbs? Would this work?

 

LEDs don't "screw in" like incandescents..

 

Thanks for the obvious there. tongue.gif They do, however, make LED bulbs that do screw in.

 

Yes, they do.

No, they won't work right behind your gauges. Searching will find a lot of threads on this, you'll have dark patches between numbers and such.

 

lol...

 

I tried replacing the bulbs with blue incandescants... it was very dim and it didn't work.

 

I changed the bulbs behind the cluster with LED's. DTN is correct, it is not very bright, but it is illuminated enough to see all the gauges. It worked for me so I'm gonna leave it that way. I'll take pictures when I'm at work tonight and post in the morning.

 

I changed them with led bulbs from superbright leds and it turned out pretty good. Not perfect - the light is not uniform on the fuel gauge, and the H from the temp gauge is a little dim, but otherwise it's fine. But note that the bulbs were pretty good - they were the 5 LED bulbs - which have one led pointing as you would expect, and another four pointing horizontally around.. They're called WLED-X5, here's a pic:
http://www.superbrightleds.com/products/car/wled-x5.jpg

Like I said, it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. I'll try to get a pic if you want.

 

id love to see pictures, im glad someone took the initiative to try this out, i was wondering the same thing myself.

i just dont want to spend the money on new gauges with the EL glow or whatever, especially when the best looking one ive seen is in KM/H!

 

I'll take some tonight.

Here are some pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/radu.rd2/DashW...128736738763186
http://picasaweb.google.com/radu.rd2/DashW...128741033730498
http://picasaweb.google.com/radu.rd2/DashW...128749623665138
http://picasaweb.google.com/radu.rd2/DashW...128749623665154

You can browse the album for a couple more pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/radu.rd2/DashWork

It looks pretty good in the pictures, maybe a little bit better than in reality. It's pretty good though, just a little discontinuity in the fuel gauge, and the H is a bit dimmed. I don't really like the color of the bulbs all that much. You don't see it in the picture (the camera probably adjusts the colors), but the blue is a little bit greenish. You can kinda see it in this picture:
http://picasaweb.google.com/radu.rd2/DashW...128719558893890
The close one is a superbrightleds bulb (not a 5-WLED one, a simple single LED one), you can see the color difference from what I would like it to be (ebay led in the upper side of the picture).

All in all, it's a very good deal in terms of the work you put in smile.gif I think you might be able to sand the LEDs a bit for even better results. Also be aware that rotating the bulb a little can dramatically improve the results so be sure to try that when installing them. Also be careful when taking the old bulbs out, for one of them the piece of plastic on the inside that was holding it broke off and I had to glue the new one in.