Anyone have some pics of their gauges at night?
TIA

 

I just ordered hyperwhite leds for mine I'll let ya know in a couple weeks

 

Stock gauge face, 14 Ultra Bright White LED's



White LED + Blue filter = Blue light

Even though I wanted white, blue is just fine.

 

http://images.cardomain.com/member_i...8_974_full.jpg

 

if I put Red LED's behind the dash would it look any different then it does now???? like more deep red?

 

reverse glow at night

 

I got the Macwean gauges and blue leds and now I cant really see the needles at night. Is there any diffrent "glowing" needles I can get? Or anything else I can do?

 

How can I get the lights to be blue or reverse glow for that matter, both look real nice

 

Where'd you get your bulbs from?

 

Yes, please let me know where you got those bulbs, I like the way that looks.

Kyle

 

Red Backlighting Another
Another 2

 

What EXACTLY did you do to make it look like that? I like it.

 

Well.. I made the them all myself.. The bulbs (LED's) were purchased from a guy on ebay.. Real nice.. Gave me a free UV led to try out.. I got 20 Ultra Bright White LED's for $12 plus $2 for shipping.. Not bad..

There's a bunch of manufacturers of LED's.. The best supposedly come from Japan.. The brightness is commonly rated in terms of "MCD". The LED's I got are around 4000 MCD. The higher the number the brighter..

After you get your LED's, you will need bulb sockets to put them in.. I dont know the part number or name off hand, but you can buy bulb sockets at a local car parts shop.. When you have the correct bulb socket, it will be one of two things.. One is a bulb in the socket, with the bulb connection tacked (welded) to the contact's, the other are bulbs that you can just pull out.. (unless you got plain bulbless sockets duh)..

Then depending on the rated voltage drop of the LED's you buy, you would wire a resistor in series to compensate the rest of the voltage..

Say your LED's are rated at 3.2 volts, then multiply that times the number of LED's you will be using on one socket.. I used 2. So it's going to be 6.4 volts.. Now it's different in every car, so it's better to rate slightly high, but you need your car's normal idle running voltage. My car is 12.582 or something, but I was anticipating 14max volts, so incase of an unnatural spike.. So 14 - 6.4 = 7.6 volts we have to dissipate.. What I'm using are 330 Ohm +-5%resistors (Orange Orange Brown Gold).

Once you get the LED's and resistors straightened out, you can go onto installing them in sockets.. it's best to solder the LED/resistor legs in, since vibration might cause "blinking".. Also be sure not to over heat the LED's since you can melt them..

Here are a couple images of my final product:



Be sure you mark the proper polarity for the LED's so when you put them in, they are right side up, so to say..

Here's a page that gives some LED voltage adn resistance info:
http://jwatrous.org/LED-info.html

This page can help you with the resistor color codes..
http://webhome.idirect.com/~jadams/e...esist_calc.htm

If I missed something here, let me know..

:: EDIT ::

Be sire to diffuse the LED's by lightly sanding the light emmiting end of the LED.. It should look cloudy when you are done.. This prevents spot lighting.

 

why did they come out blue even thou u used white LEDs?
Marcin

 

The reason it's blue is GM's fault..

Standard incondecent bulbs produce a slightly yellowish tint.

Since GM wanted the lines and numbers more white then what incondecent bulbs can do, they put a blue filter on the backing of the gauge face..

This makes the stock incondecent bulbs yellowish tint almost white..

So. When you intorduce a "close to pure white" light source, it shining through a blue filter produces the blue light...

I'm not sure if Pontiac's use a red filter or red bulbs. so that will have to be up to someone with a pontiac to fill us in with.. I'm guessing it's a filter, because it's going to last longer than bulb paint coatings.. Unless they use red glass for the bulbs.. So I'm clueless on that end.. And I'm also unsure about 97+ clusters.. might be a totally different setup.. : /