Hi guys. Well i'm wanting to make my guage cluster all red but leave the needles white. And i will be getting a boost, oil pressure, and a EGT guage for my a-piller. I have a few questions to be answered.
1. Should i get black faced guages? Or white faced?
2. Does anyone know if i painted the numbers and everything red with a type of paint and got bright white bulbs would that work?
And 3. with the guages in the pillar how could i match them with my guage cluster if every guage that i find has orange needles?

Also wanting to redo my climate control, and all my little bulbs to red. How hard are they to install? I can't get into the how-to.

This post has been edited by celiracer: Oct 9, 2006 - 12:49 PM

black face gauges..ftw

white face gauges...ftl

Thanks man. But now how can i find them three types of gauges all white numbers and needles? I looked on autometers site and they have none.

Does anyone know if i could get the cobalt ones from auto meter and change them to red instead of the blue that they have? would that look good with red gauge cluster/white needles, and then the three other gauges all red?

This post has been edited by celiracer: Oct 9, 2006 - 12:00 AM

How-to's are not working for me yet. Does anyone have any info to put these little LED's in i want to solder them but not sure if that would work.

check out speedhut gauges, im not sure of the quality of the gauge, but you can customize them pretty much however you want

thanks man. I'm just scared to mess up when i do this custom climate control.

i used leds from lsdiodes.com to do my climate control, they have the bluest leds ive found. the leds with the built in resistors never seem to look as good to me

How do you do it? i don't understand with the resisters?

This post has been edited by celiracer: Oct 10, 2006 - 1:35 AM

Does anyone know if you have to use the resistors if you just solder the led's into the panel like the factory bulbs are? i don't really understand what the resister does.

>

i have the cobalt gauges and you cant change the led color...its not like their other gauges where you can change the bulb color from the back...you cant evevn open these babys with out sending them back to autometer.

you need resistors so the led would last longer.

higher ohm resistance = less power to the bulb, being dimmer but it will last longer.

lower ohm resistance = more power to the bulb, thus being more brighter but shortening its life span.

it depends. if you hook up the led by itself i duno whats gona happen but it should still work at its brightest.

Well i just want to solder them into the panel, like take the old bulbs out of the solder and re-solder them to the panel. Would i need resisters if i do that?

ok, leds are usually have a voltage drop of like 3V or so. to use fun terms from dansdata: if you hook 3V led up to a 12V power supply without a resister it'll burn really really bright for a second then it'll become a smoke emitting diode, then finally a friode.

there are led calculators around, i use this one
http://metku.net/index.html?path=mods/ledcalc/index_eng

which will tell you what kind of resistor you need for your single led, series led, or parallel circuits. check the min/max voltages of your leds to get all the data. because i'm sorta novice with electronics i'd just go with whatever it has for typical.

it's a good idea to pickup a multimeter and check what kind of voltage you get from whatever socket though. my cc unit was a solid 12V, but the dome light was 12V with battery power and 14V with the alternator.

for your ideas on red back with white needles: sounds very cool and original. so i'd suggest getting enough stuff to try a few approaches.

lighting gels (when i got mine for the clock this was the only place i could find em for quick online buying)
http://www.axemusic.com/prodtype.asp?PT_ID...lighting%20gels

combine those with a white led might work. could also try it with the regular bulbs (without the green toyota condoms). but that'll still be a bit yellowish. custom wire the whole thing and you should be good for whatever you're heart desires. but the circuitry for the gauge cluster (at least on mine) is a flimsy plastic type, and not a rigid board like the cc unit was.

/edit
one other thing. be *sure* to check the resistors power disipation. allot of times when you want a single led hooked up to a 12V source you need something more than the quarter-watt resistors they sell at lsdiodes. for half-watt resistors you might need to go to mouser.com.

This post has been edited by Zimluura: Oct 12, 2006 - 8:42 AM

That sounds way confusing for me. So i guess i'll just leave it how it is.

>

THAT'S NO WAY TO TALK!!!!!!


do me a favor, buy these things:

buy *two* of these (buy more to play-around more)
http://www.lsdiodes.com/shop/index.php?mai...p;products_id=1

then buy *one* (it'll be a 5 pack) of these - get the 100ohm kind (buy more than one if you like)
http://www.lsdiodes.com/shop/index.php?mai...;products_id=68

then buy a 9-volt battery



then do this:
connect the LEDs to each other, long leg of the first LED goes to the short leg of the second, then connect the resistor at whatever end you want. use a soldering iron and solder for each connection.

so your series looks like this
-------LED------LED-------RESISTOR-------

then touch one end of that series to the 9-volt's plus side, and the other to the minus side (be sorta carful here: if the two ends of the series touch each other during this you could discharge the whole battery and get a mild tingly sensation in your fingers). if it doesn't light up, switch the plus/minus.



after shipping, this project could set you back...i don't know, maybe 5-10 bucks, take maybe 5-10 minutes. buying leds at radio shack usually costs 2 bucks a pop.

This post has been edited by Zimluura: Oct 16, 2006 - 12:57 PM

Isn't there an easier way? I thought you could get them LED's and just solder them to the electrical board?

you can, but you doo need to have a resistor in there as well.

there are led fabrications you can get at:
http://superlumination.com/194.htm

and those have a resistor already attached and are a (somewhat) complex machine soldered circuit. they pop right in (no soldering) and all is good. if they were leds to begin with then yes, you desolder the old ones, solder in the new ones and you're done.


the reason you need a resistor (for replacing incandescent bulbs) is this:
incandescent bulbs have lots of electrical resistance just from their design. leds have very very little resistance. so hooking an led up to a battery is almost like just hooking a wire from one terminal of the battery to the other. the battery rapidly discharges all of it's current and you're left with a dead battery and a somewhat heated wire.

tangent story, when i was doing my cc unit, we used a multimeter to check the voltages and figure out +/-. my friend didn't brace himself so well, slipped, and bridged the terminals on the socket with the multimeter. and it took no time at all for one of the traces on the cc-unit board to burn. we fixed it, by finding the burnt spot (was easy to see) and running a wire around it jumping the burnt spot.

in my understanding, fuses work on the same sorta principle (it'd be nice if a fuse saved me there). fuses have very little electrical resistance and are part of the circuit, but they're designed to burn when they get too hot. so they can martyr themselves to protect more expensive things from being electrocuted. i'm going to drink one tonight "to all the heroic fuses!"

i think the biggest problem with custom wiring anything in your gauge cluster is going to be the flimsy circuit-board.

This post has been edited by Zimluura: Oct 17, 2006 - 1:16 PM

check this site out. i saw it here a few months ago.

this dude custom lid his gauges with leds. knows a hellova lot more about electronics than i do (i got no clue on his dome light project).
http://www9.plala.or.jp/burial/celica/english/index.html

you can also wire 4 leds together and solder the ends to the bulb locations....

neg----led-----led-----led-----led-----pos

something like that

each led will get roughly 3-4 volts and you wont have to mess with resistors.

basically
leds work by cascading electrons over a chemical or something like that....
too many electrons and it gets too hot inside
it will start glowing a wierd color then die

if you use enough in row like above, they each work together and slow down the flow of electrons






This post has been edited by Stu37363: Oct 23, 2006 - 2:20 AM

Depends what you are wanting to change mate.
If you are simply wanting to change then green leds that currently lightup the top of the switch when it is selected then it is as easy as desoldering the old ones out and soldering the red ones back in no resistors or anything else needed. I think they are 3mm leds. Be sure to put the new ones back in the same way the old ones were. i.e. 1 leg is negative and 1 positive.

If you are talking about including leds instead of the bulbs then you would need resistors to drop the voltage from 12v to about 1.5v

I think its the first part that your wanting though so just buy the leds and swap them over.