I have a 96z28 dash in my car and want the cluster to light up at night the same color green as my Alpine radio. My question is, has anyone ever replaced just the bulbs behind th ecluster, Was it worth it and do they really work.

 

I have Xenon clear bulbs in my TA . After having them for awhile and seeing how dim the stock lights look in other cars I would never go back to regular bulbs .

Macewen Motorsports sells green 194 Xenon bulbs that your looking for . What that will do though when lit up , is make all the red portions of your cluster look brownish .

 

You may want check this place out . I have an Blaupunkt Heidelburg Cd player and the lighting is an exact copy of the Volkswagon Blue/Red ligthing . They are making me a custom guage face with Volkswagon blue backlighting in C5 corvette fonts with the bright red redlines and needles ........bye bye orange . This isnt an overlay , its an entirely new guage face ....these guys are pretty awesome .

This will apply to you here too goin to green on the light controls and the HVAC panel . I need to make the pontiac orange color bright red to match everything else and also darken the blue portions to match the Indigo VW color . Once you peel off the Hvac overlay youll see color blobs on the back , in my case they were orange and in your case they'd be white . For the orange parts , I took dark red taillight repair tape and cut out sections to cover up anywhere there was orange . For the parts that were blue , I got a transparent blue file folder at Staples and cut out the correct shapes I needed to cover up the blue portions . The adhesive on the back of the Hvac panel was plenty to hold the blue pieces and in my case anyways the back of the Hvac panel was still sticky enuff to go back on just like it came off . Now everything that was orange is now bright red and the blue is exactly the color I need it to be . For you , you would just need to get a transparent green file foler and cover the white portions on yours .

Also .....since there are no avail. Xenon or brighter #37 bulbs ( hvac and ligth controls ) I also found a way to brighten the light getting to the guages . The is a clear lexan piece inside the Hvac that light from the 2 bulbs travel thru to light everything up ( you have to take off the black snapcover to get it out ) . There a white markings on this lexan piece that correspond with everywhere theres script on the hvac overlay ....if ya take it apart youll see what I mean . Well , I took flat white paint and painted the entire backside ( ONLY the backside ) . It did brighten everything up , even with the xtra red and blue the light now has to filter thru it turned out being brighter than before .

All this may seem complicated , but I thought was easy easy stuff . Took about 3 hours figuring out actually how I wanted to do it , and only about an hour actually doing it .

Good luck .

 

That sounds like it it wil be a nice looking cluster but I am not looking to go that extreme and pay over $100 for it. Im just looking to get a different look with a simple bulb change. Im not too worried about the HVAC lights. I can mess with that with that paper you where talking about. I might try getting those green bulbs at autozone. Do yo uthink the 194's will be too bright for the cluster

 

The colored green ( or whatever color ) bulbs at autozone will be a bit dimmer than the how the cluster is now . If your gonna use a colored bulb , the only way to go IMO is with a Xenon high output bulb . I guess try and see . The auto zone bulbs will be cheap enuff , if they dont work very well ...ya know theres a higher output Xenon green bulb available .

 

Ya I know there are brighter then normal bulbs out there but I really dont want to spend $20 for a pack of 2 bulbs. My cluster takes 7 bulbs tolight it up. I was thinking of just trying 1 pair and see what hapens but Im gonna wait a few more days to see if I can come up with a different cheaper way. i might remove my cluster and see if I can take it apart and add green paper in between the bulb and cluster and see what it looks like