Instrument Panel Lights

I replaced mine gauge bulbs with LEDs from superbrightLEDs. https://www.superbrightleds.com/cat/ba9s-ba7s/ .  Big improvement.  

it was nice to order the led  bulb color to match each of the gauges warning light color- red, green, blue... all lights now clearly visible in bright direct sunlight.

I personally kept the background lights incandescent... the bulb heat helped keep my gauges from fogging up during winter driving/ cold morning driving.

I would suggest you physically  check the size of your bulbs before you order. 0n my 356 original and Chinese repo gauges, some were B7 other B9

Lfepardo

You write that you left background bulbs as incandescents?  The rest, I assume, you replaced as colored LEDs?

Are there both background and specific warning lights?

Were there any side affects of switching to LEDs?  Need to install relays; resistors, etc?????

Will all become obvious when I pull a gauge to be relamped?

Marshall

Our gauges have a tendency to fog up at times, like at sunset on a humid day.  Leaving the background bulbs as incandescent provide just enough heat to (sometimes) defog the lens.   LED bulbs would not do that.  If your background is not quite bright you should look for BA7 bulbs of 7 or 9 watt to kick them up a notch.  LED background bulbs will be brighter, if that is really what you’re after, and maybe they might not fog up, anyway.

There are two or three background lamps per gauge, and every other indicator light you see has it’s own bulb.  The indicators can be replaced with LED bulbs, just get the LED bulbs for each in the color that you see from that location:  red for red, green for green, etc.

You should not need relays or any other assists for any of these bulbs to work as LEDs.  

Perfect reply!  Just what I needed. Like a filet cooked to perfection on a hot Louisiana night.
Thanks

What Gordon said!  Thank you... i was not near my phone this PM.   I took the kids skiing this afternoon... skied till 10pm. Fun times... though I am looking forward to no snow on the reads so I can drive the speedy.  It’s been a month now... and I need my fix ;-)

Marshal.........I had a friend who didn't know that there was a rheostat in the light switch to dim or brighten the instrument cluster lights. I'm not trying to be a smart aleck here but do you know about this ?  just trying to help..........Bruce

28 degrees as a high today. Day after tomorrow 60. I’ll check then whether it’s something as simple as a dimmer switch.  If so, I’ll announce it to the world.
Thanks.  

Aircooled.  I did get out yesterday for a 38 degree drive and tried the light switch to see if it was also a dimmer.  Unfortunately no.  Looks like I'll go the bulb replacement route come Spring.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with advice.

Marshall

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@Marshall posted:

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...tried the light switch to see if it was also a dimmer.  Unfortunately no...

Probably a blessing in disguise.

On the Chinese knockoff headlight switches found in many of our cars, the panel dimmer is the Achilles heel.

That circuit has to handle a surprising amount of power - the more you dim the lights, the more power gets dissipated by the switch. The original switches had pretty beefy rheostats to handle the load, but that was in a land far away and long ago.

My own switch literally went up in smoke the first time I tried to dim the panel lights, and VS would only send me a switch identical to that one. I ended up moving that circuit off the switch and wiring up some load resistors to dim the lights - and it took quite a few of those to spread the heat out enough to keep them from getting too hot.

Swapping in LED bulbs is a better choice.

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Greetings,

We are now back on this and trying to replace the incandescent lights in the instruments.  My mechanic calls the bulbs he's pulled "grains of wheat" bulbs.  They have very small bases.  Could these be miniature bases as listed on the superbrite site?  Has anyone found this situation and can make recommentations on the correct LEDs to use for the instrument panel and guages?

Thanks in advance,

Marshall

Greetings,

I've reviewed all the great postings on this subject.  Does having miniature bases change anything? 

These miniature bulbs come as 74 and 194 with SMDs as 1, 3 and 3.25 and as front emitting, 220 and 360 degrees.

Has anyone broken the code and how bright is too bright and which lights for which application, e.g., gauge vs. an instrument panel, limited visibility vs. light cast in all directions?

I do recall the recommendation for leaving in the incandescent dash lights as they ease fogging........

Marshall

The 74 and 194 bulbs on the Superbrite site are different bulbs than we use.  They replace glass bulbs with a pinched glass end with contact leads coming right out of the glass.  

The 356 dash gauge background bulbs are BA-7 base (hence the "grain of wheat" idea - They're about that big).  If you search on the Superbrite site for "BA7" you'll see what they offer.  Take a look at THIS PAGE.

The potential problem I see with the Superbrite BA-7 bulb is that you need the light to radiate off to the sides of the bulb.  If the SB single bulb BA-7 sends the light radially  out from the end you're golden.  At 89¢ per bulb for maybe 8 of them it's worth it to try them out, right?

They offer a slightly larger BA-9 bulb with both axis and radial led placement, but that's a bigger base and probably used for the annunciator positions ( hi/lo beam, e-brake on, etc) in the Multi-gauge.

Good hunting!