diy led back lighting (heater, lighter, shifter)

[Jxw]

So i got bored and decided it was time to fix that damn intermittent back lighting on my heater control.
Having a bunch of assorted electronics bits lying around i figured i'd see how easy it would be to chuck something together that will last longer than the standard globes and illuminate better.

Be careful and make sure you don't bridge anything with solder, Some soldering skill is required, worst case you'll blow a fuse and it won't work.
I advise you to test before fitting to the vehicle with a 9 volt battery to make sure they light up.

parts required: cost approx 50 cents each
Vero-type board ($4.50 and there's enough board to make enough for a few cars)
LED's amount and color of your choice (about $0.30-0.40 each)
470 ohm smd resistors (about $0.05 each) you could use 330 ohm for brighter(no lower) or 600 ohm for duller
heat shrink (optional, helps protect it incase it's pushed to far into the holder, the grove filed into it should stop it going to far in though)


Cut and file a piece of board so it looks like this, doesn't have to be exact measurements. 5-6 holes long X 2 tracks wide, the grove is so it will fit into the globe holder (4.6mm wide) and the cut track is where the resistor will go, make sure this is a complete cut and the 2 sides of the track are separated(if not the resistor won't do anything and you'll let the smoke out of the LED).



Fit the legs through the set of holes at the end opposite the grove and bend the led to face forward, solder in with the - (flat side) on the solid track without the cut.
Solder the resistor in place then build up the bottom half of the board so it will be a good fit in the globe holder.
Fit a small bit of heat shrink over the base of the led and to cover the resistor.

The flat filed into the board denotes -ve, when fitting to the globe holder put this side inline with the black wire on the plug, if you fit it and it doesn't light up pull it out and turn it 180 degrees in the holder.



Took very little time to piece this all together, they work great and cost bugger all.




Looks much better in the car than the pictures. phones really don't take great pics in the dark.


light does fade a bit towards R and P but it's still quite visible, you could put 2 leds on 1 board with 1 resistor and face them in V so they will illuminate more for the shifter as the globe mount points towards the rear of the car and leds are sort of directional with their output.

[Jxw]

Now for the larger cluster lights... even easier, break a bit of board off 6 holes long X 3 complete tracks wide (so you have half a track each side it breaks easily down the dotted line, use a vice or pliers)
Solder LED into the middle and left track.
Solder SMD resistor across the middle and right track.
Fits great in the holder like this, If it doesn't light up in the dash rotate it 180 degrees.

[GothicKidd]

Looks good man! How bright are the lights compared to stock? I tried LED's like that before in my Cluster.. but they seemed to be more of a aimed light and didnt spread much

[Jxw]

the heater control & shifter are brighter than my stock vn, the red is duller with the white backlight but the green and blue stand out more, if you want them brighter as stated just lower the resistor value down to 330 ohm, i wouldn't go any lower than that though.

below are some comparison pics both taken with the same camera, distance & lighting conditions, top std globes below led.



Messing with cluster lighting and trying to eliminate the hot spot/directional characteristics if the LED by using 2 leds per light resulted in the following


Bending and facing the leds in different directions i managed to get a fairly even throw of light.

standard globe:



dual LED:
There's 1 hot spot on the bottom of the speedo that i can't seem to eliminate with this board design, can also see it in the pic with the std globes just more noticeable with leds, the cause is just the shape of all the clear plastic in the cluster to distribute light evenly.

[mint]

Your talent is wasted....

[Jxw]

and the solution, no need to do all the hard work when someone has done it already.
found the following on a china wholesale website similar to ebay, unfortunately they don't support paypal through escrow anymore (if you're not familiar with escrow the money is sent to escrow and held, once delivery is confirmed the payment is released to the seller) most of the sellers on there will accept paypal directly to them so you still have an option of opening a dispute if need be.

from the experiments and basically the design i was thinking of making.....
instead of pointing the light straight at the face it'll illuminate from behind, will work perfect on the auto gear shifter illumination.
I'm sure these will work great in all the indicator lights at the bottom of the dash except for the engine light in vn/vp as it's part of the circuit from memory for the diagnostics (i may be wrong though)



To eliminate the hot spot from the cluster face i was thinking 2-3 in a similar fashion but i found this using 5 smd led's, with that much illumination thrown from the sides it should eliminate any frontal hot spots and shadowed/unlit areas.

[Jxw]

Ordered a lot of the t10's, the outer 2 in the cluster fit perfect the middle one requires some small modification to make it fit as the leds hit the clear plastic diffuser and won't allow the assembly to fit in..


Below shows the height problem with the assembly in a dismantled cluster, the leds are pushed to one side to fit so i could see how much needed to be ground out of the plastic, with both speedo and tacho mounted it won't fit.




Now the fix, if you are having second thoughts or doubting your ability i wouldn't recommend attempting this, if you have a faulty cluster to practice on use it first
I used a bench grinder (bit of an overkill but it works), took about 3 seconds on each, you must be extremely careful not to hit the circuit board obviously and watch out for flying bits of molten plastic! use those poxy looking safety glasses, better to look stupid for a minute than be blind in 1 eye for the rest of your life.
Avoid subjecting the assemblies to much vibration and shock and don't touch the face with your hands/fingers


Don't worry to much about the rough surface on on it now, if anything it'll help spread the light better and eliminate the focused hot spot effect.





The end result.

Thumbnail images were taken in the day with some background light, large images at night

White

It looks like there is a hot spot in the center of the cluster. The crappy phone camera makes it look much worse in the pic than it is, it's really not that noticeable.

Blue



ordered 18/11, posted 21/11, received 5/12, slow postage but you can't expect a quick service for free, got 4 blue and 6 white for about $8.50... worth the wait imo.