Instrument Panel LEDs

[locovaca]

I just did my 93 cluster with LEDs. I bought 5 "samples" from SBL- a single, a WLED-4, 5, and 6, and a WLED-xHP6 to see how bad the hotspots would be and to figure out if they would be bright enough. By far the best one for the gauges was the WLED-xHP6 (no bulb points up, which helps eliminate hotspots). For the indicators I went with the WLED-4, it was more than bright enough. So my final total was:

5x WLED-HP6 (Cool White, I took off my green film and made my cluster white, I'll post pics later)
8x WLED-4 (3 Red, 3 Amber, 2 Green, 1 White- for the indicator bulbs. White went in the high beams, I would've bought blue but I just re-used the bulb I got for my samples and saved some money).

 

[Ranger-Danger]

Sounds like a circus on your dash. Once i see the pics i can finally get mine ordered.
I'm sure it looks sweet.

 

[irishblessing]

**Irishblessing** I'm ordering the bulbs right now and am wondering, I have a 93 ford ranger 4.0 xlt.. I have the 4 small oil/gas/temp/bat on the left and speed and tac on the right.. There are i think 5-6 bulbs that illuminate the gauges. My question is Should i use a wled-x or get a multi led like the wled-x4?? Don't want it to be to bright you know? I noticed on your pic that the brightness is pushing out harder in certain areas. Are the leds right in that area of the brightness? Thanks for the Help. And it looks Great by the way.

yeah were it looks brighter thats where my bubs are the ones i ordered are a single bulb with four little bulbs that shine straight instead of a 180 or 120 degree angle you can still use your dimmer but my bulbs are only a little brighter than stock there not extremely bright it looks alot better in person then the picture i have there alot more blue and i had six bulbs for the instrument cluster but as you can see from my picture i have no tach so im sure theres another bulb for the tach plus if you want to do your heater controls thats anothere two bulbs and there the same size as the instrumnet cluster (Mine were yours should be too) and were all here to help so dont mention it

 

[RangerFuss]

im wondering if the WLEDx ones with 1 led would be bright enough, theyre only 270 lumens compared to the WLEDx4 which has 1300 lumens or would


changing sources here, but if i were to buy LED's on ebay, would it be best to be skeptical about the ones being shipped from china or hong kong? or would they be the same quality as buying LEDs from anywhere else

thanks

 

[locovaca]

The WLED-single LED (that are less than a buck) are definitely not bright enough. I ended up using my "test" bulb in the ash tray light after taking off the green diffuser.

The problem is the dispersion of mcd (SBL doesn't rate in Lumens). With a single LED pointed up you get 270 mcd over a very limited cone, and is also why you get hot spots. The ones I bought are rated at 10,000 mcd; they are definitely brighter than a bulb but seem to be much more brighter than they really are because of my removing the film.

If you're looking for another good source, I've ordered bulbs from Autolumination.com with success. They have a bit more variety. I definitely recommend eating the $5 in shipping and ordering a few samples of the bulbs you're looking at. The $5 makes up for itself in the subsequent $50 order

 

[RangerFuss]

ya, i was worried about the single led's not being bright enough

ill probably end up getting the 4 or 5 led WLED's, although im not sure if i should go with the 6 led that had 32 degrees dispersion or the 5 led that has 220 degrees

does anyone know about buying led's from China or Hong Kong on ebay? are they the same quality as any other led's?

thanks

 

[Ranger-Danger]

I just did my 93 cluster with LEDs. I bought 5 "samples" from SBL- a single, a WLED-4, 5, and 6, and a WLED-xHP6 to see how bad the hotspots would be and to figure out if they would be bright enough. By far the best one for the gauges was the WLED-xHP6 (no bulb points up, which helps eliminate hotspots). For the indicators I went with the WLED-4, it was more than bright enough. So my final total was:

5x WLED-HP6 (Cool White, I took off my green film and made my cluster white, I'll post pics later)
8x WLED-4 (3 Red, 3 Amber, 2 Green, 1 White- for the indicator bulbs. White went in the high beams, I would've bought blue but I just re-used the bulb I got for my samples and saved some money).

You got any pictures yet??

 

[irishblessing]

ya, i was worried about the single led's not being bright enough

ill probably end up getting the 4 or 5 led WLED's, although im not sure if i should go with the 6 led that had 32 degrees dispersion or the 5 led that has 220 degrees

does anyone know about buying led's from China or Hong Kong on ebay? are they the same quality as any other led's?

thanks

why would you buy leds from hong kong or china when you can buy them from AMERICA
go to superbrightleds.com you can finde everything there they have good prices and fast shipping

 

[RangerFuss]

irishblessing you said in a previous post that yours came out blue, does that mean you used white LED's?

 

[locovaca]

You got any pictures yet??

K. This first one is half of my test bulbs, half of the normal bulbs, just to give you an idea of the cool white look:

This is the final product. There is a hot spot on the 45 mpg mark- that's due to the way the bulb is surrounded by plastic. I'm going to eventually pull it apart and cut off the plastic so the light disperses more evenly.

Edit: Here are some more pics.

The only stuff I cleaned off (with nail polish remover) was the green where white is now. I didn't remove it from the red lines nor the blue KPH/RPM sections. I had a test cluster which didn't work and I compared removing the red/blue and decided I liked it better with it still on.

 

[nitrofan1]

That looks good! Question though. On mine the 45 on the spedo is dark. Did I miss a bulb? My chubby digits didn't feel any in that area.

 

[locovaca]

On both the Tach and Non-Tach clusters there are five bulbs:

1. Far left size (lights the voltage/temp gauges)
2. Left Middle, around the 15 MPH mark (lights the Oil Pressue/Fuel Gauges and about 1/3 of the speedometer)
3. Top Middle, under the 45 MPH mark (lights 1/3 of the speedometer)
4. Right Middle, around the 75 MPH mark (lights up 1/2 of the tach and 1/3 of the speedometer)
5. Upper Right, around the 4 on the tach (lights up 1/2 of the tach)

 

[Ranger-Danger]

Man that looks awesome. Was it hard getting the pins and stuff pluged back in?? Well its time to order mine. I will post some pictures also during my switch over. Wont be for a few weeks tho cause I gotta put in a new tranny / clutch / T Case / All that fun Stuff.

 

[locovaca]

So, I developed my own patented method for accurately putting the pins back on.

What you need:

1. A Computer Power Supply
2. A 3 pin to 4 pin computer fan adapter + a 3 pin case/cpu fan
3. A selection of low value resistors (I think I settled on a 33 ohm, 1/2 Watt for all of my tests).
4. A drill.

Most of the threads I've seen essentially are guessing at the needle locations based on a photo after taking them off. Instead, I used a computer power supply and some other items to essentially "calibrate" my needles to known locations.

The computer power supply has a +12V line (usually the yellow wire), which is perfect for the tests. So, I went about 5/6 gauges using the power supply like this:

1. Voltage: This one is easy, +12V and Ground to the correct terminals.
2. Oil/Fuel,Temp: +12V to Battery (B+), Ground to Ground, and Signal through the 33 Ohm resistor to ground.
3. Tach: This is where I got tricky. I replicated the tach signal using the tach signal from the computer fan. +12V to Battery (B+), Ground to Ground, and the fan's tach signal wire (On your 3 to 4 pin adapter it should be the only wire not connected) to the 8 Cyl terminal. I don't know it wasn't working with the Sig terminal, but it worked with the 8 cyl one.
4. Speedometer: Either get a spare speedo cable from the junkyard, or else find a bit that'll go into the speedometer female in and spin it consistently. Then (I have a cheap drill) I zip tied the trigger on the drill so that it locked in at about 55 MPH and used that as a reference.

So, on top of all of this, I also had bought a second cluster for $20 and modified that instead of my original, so I had a reference for my "calibration", and it was perfect. Speed, tach, everything dead on. It's also much safer to do this at a work bench than trying to attach needles while you're driving.

 

[irishblessing]

irishblessing you said in a previous post that yours came out blue, does that mean you used white LED's?

no mine are blue leds i didint want to scrape the green film off so i just put blue leds in and there so bright they passed the green film and came out light blue