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Dash problems

Noefforts

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Hey people. I have recently gone to change my leds in the cluster due to them being old and starting to die. I out the new ones in and popped the fuse, put a new fuse in and only 2 leds worked (140k+ and fuel) just tried to put the 140+ into the 60 spot just so I can at least see what I'm doing through town and after plugging the battery back in smoke started to come out from behind the dash. What should I do to fix this? Thank you
 

J_D 2.0

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LEDs aren‘t ”bidirectional” like an incandescent bulb is. Some LEDs have electronics in them to switch the polarity the correct way if you plug them in wrong but some don’t this so if you plug it in wrong it either won’t work or will fry it. Hopefully the smoke is just the LED bulbs and not the dash or your might be up for a new dash.
 

Noefforts

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LEDs aren‘t ”bidirectional” like an incandescent bulb is. Some LEDs have electronics in them to switch the polarity the correct way if you plug them in wrong but some don’t this so if you plug it in wrong it either won’t work or will fry it. Hopefully the smoke is just the LED bulbs and not the dash or your might be up for a new dash.
So when I was putting the leds in I had 1 work then I changed the direction of the others to make them work then when I turned it on the fuse blew straight away. I put the old leds back in and only 2 worked then I just changed one of the ones that work to the spot that I need and it seems to have fried the only 2 that were working but didn't blow the fuse this time. Could this be an electrical problem from the wires that go into the dash?
 

J_D 2.0

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Sounds like the new leds might draw too much power if it blew the fuse, either that or they are just dodgy. I doubt that it would be a wiring issue if the wiring hasn’t been messed with unless the wiring got fried but the fuse should prevent that from happening.

I’m not sure how the bulbs are connected in your dash but IIRC from many years ago when I’ve pulled apart dashes they used to run them in series rather than parallel so the electric current stops at the first faulty bulb preventing any bulbs after that one in the circuit from working.

Of course I could be completely wrong in my recollection as I’ve not pulled a dash out for about 20 years! If I’m wrong I’m sure someone here will put me straight.
 

Noefforts

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Sounds like the new leds might draw too much power if it blew the fuse, either that or they are just dodgy. I doubt that it would be a wiring issue if the wiring hasn’t been messed with unless the wiring got fried but the fuse should prevent that from happening.

I’m not sure how the bulbs are connected in your dash but IIRC from many years ago when I’ve pulled apart dashes they used to run them in series rather than parallel so the electric current stops at the first faulty bulb preventing any bulbs after that one in the circuit from working.

Of course I could be completely wrong in my recollection as I’ve not pulled a dash out for about 20 years! If I’m wrong I’m sure someone here will put me straight.

Thank you for your time to respond to this, it is very much appreciated. I'm about to try putting in a different cluster to see if that works. Thank you for your advise
 

degeneration

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Bulbs are wired in parallel. LEDs will either work, or not - they won't generally blow fuses, and you generally shouldn't be blowing them up sticking them in your instrument cluster.

You probably shorted something out with the prongs of the LED when you installed the new light
 
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