This arrived today, ready for some butchery in preparation for my led backlighting project.
I'm only just starting out, but i'll update as I make progress. I'll be replacing my dials in the near future with aftermarket ones with decals already cut out, so i won't be looking at customising the existing dials (ok maybe I will..).
Other folk have already tried this before with awesome results, but I wanted to work it out for myself and find an easier way for anyone to do it. I have spoken to a few people who are interested in doing this themselves, but are a little daunted. I was convinced that it wouldn't be any more complicated than the LED conversions some of us have done, and the best way to learn is to take things apart, soooo....
Basic disassembly is straight forward and obvious, so I won't describe how I stripped it down. Just take care removing the needles from the dials, also being careful not to scratch the dials if you intend on re-using them.
Here's the circuit board behind the speedo with the mileometer LCD. I got a bit sidetracked here as I have always wanted to have a blue led behind the LCD panel - our dash is blue, but the LCD display is still orange
I unscrewed the board and found that underneath the white plastic display holder, there is a slimwedge bulb - but it is a normal white incandescent filament bulb. So where does the orange tint come from?
Aha! What's this under the display?
Bingo! I'll be discarding this orange filter and swapping the slim wedge bulb with a blue LED version.
Anyway, I can already see a really easy way to introduce backlighting, using little more than this existing exterior lighting panel that I detached earlier.
It has another pesky orange filter which can be discarded, and you can see the strip with bulb holders hidden behind. Again these are standard filament bulbs, which I will be replacing with LED versions.
This pops out...
... and slots nicely in here.
The beauty of this is that the holder strip already connects to the rear of the cluster, so you need very little modification (a slightly enlarged hole) to feed power into the white casing to power your lights. It also means that it will be connecting into the pre-existing dimmer control - simples! I reckon I could combine the spare strip to have both backlighting and front lighting if required.
It also provides a perfect platform to position and solder further LEDs behind the other dials - a bit of trial and error will be involved there, but so far it's looking like it'll be a good 'un and easy enough even for an eejit like me
More soon when I get the soldering iron out...
I'm only just starting out, but i'll update as I make progress. I'll be replacing my dials in the near future with aftermarket ones with decals already cut out, so i won't be looking at customising the existing dials (ok maybe I will..).
Other folk have already tried this before with awesome results, but I wanted to work it out for myself and find an easier way for anyone to do it. I have spoken to a few people who are interested in doing this themselves, but are a little daunted. I was convinced that it wouldn't be any more complicated than the LED conversions some of us have done, and the best way to learn is to take things apart, soooo....
Basic disassembly is straight forward and obvious, so I won't describe how I stripped it down. Just take care removing the needles from the dials, also being careful not to scratch the dials if you intend on re-using them.
Here's the circuit board behind the speedo with the mileometer LCD. I got a bit sidetracked here as I have always wanted to have a blue led behind the LCD panel - our dash is blue, but the LCD display is still orange
I unscrewed the board and found that underneath the white plastic display holder, there is a slimwedge bulb - but it is a normal white incandescent filament bulb. So where does the orange tint come from?
Aha! What's this under the display?
Bingo! I'll be discarding this orange filter and swapping the slim wedge bulb with a blue LED version.
Anyway, I can already see a really easy way to introduce backlighting, using little more than this existing exterior lighting panel that I detached earlier.
It has another pesky orange filter which can be discarded, and you can see the strip with bulb holders hidden behind. Again these are standard filament bulbs, which I will be replacing with LED versions.
This pops out...
... and slots nicely in here.
The beauty of this is that the holder strip already connects to the rear of the cluster, so you need very little modification (a slightly enlarged hole) to feed power into the white casing to power your lights. It also means that it will be connecting into the pre-existing dimmer control - simples! I reckon I could combine the spare strip to have both backlighting and front lighting if required.
It also provides a perfect platform to position and solder further LEDs behind the other dials - a bit of trial and error will be involved there, but so far it's looking like it'll be a good 'un and easy enough even for an eejit like me
More soon when I get the soldering iron out...
