Interesting, but it looks from his pictures that Cypress was using yellow LED's whose intensity is on par with the daylight. I'd be interested to hear from him to see if that's the case, or the color of the LED he used for comparision. I WAS using the daylight LED though it was a single LED, and since the light is directional from a LED and the light has to reflect to the fiber optic in the cluster, I figured that to be the reason for the dim lights. Still, it seems like the investment ($$) is hardly worth the return at something like $30 for the two LED's, with the shipping. Hardly seems worth it.

Cypress, I reassembled my CC unit and it's working fine, but I have another board for the cluster which I'm going to resolder. Has anyone heard of baking the boards in an oven to melt and resolder one? Not sure where I read it, possibly here, where putting a board in an oven at 365° for 6 minutes, takes care of those crystalized solder joints. I've stripped a board taking off gauges and their internals and I'm going to try it unless someone has a better suggestion. I have a fear that with a small soldering iron and so many connections, some of the solder will run to an adjacent joint and short the thing.

In my pics, cool white is what I selected, not yellow...
But I do have 16 colors to choose from with a push of a button.

Check eBay, I saw some as low $2 + free shipping.

I wouldn't bake it in the oven, the components would be damaged. Components from 20+ years ago are NOT designed for infrared or vapor phase solder process, just hand/wave soldering.

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Cypress, now you sparked my imagination. I'm going to assume that your using a remote control to switch different lights on and off or into different color. When you changed out the octupus cable for led's, what did you use for a power source. Did you tie this into be controlled (light intensity) by the reheostat.
Are you using an IR Remote Control with possibly 3 channels for light control?

See pic on post #6, it shows I have tapped +12V from the rheostat dimmer circuit & brought out two wires externally (for easy connect/disconnet) to connect to my cable of leds & 3 channel rgb controller (shown in pic).

I use RGB high power led strip, RGB controller + wireless remote.
- 16 colors to choose
- ON/OFF
- 7 step brightness control
- 4 special functions

Here are a few sample colors & with different brightnesses....

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Ok Cypress, you don't have to twist my arm. So, when I grow up I want to mimic what you have done! lol
I suspected you used an RGB Controller & wireless controller. An example I found was Wireless 44-key IR remote control for RGB Led strip.

http://cgi.ebay.com/D-wireless-44-key-IR-Remote-control-RGB-LED-strip-/150594641594?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item231023deba

If this is similar to what you used I'll get one and play around with it. Please bare with me for I'm knew to this technology, so if I ask a stupid question, well you'll understand........lol. The CCU and console switch lighting, from the pic's seems to work independantly in color change from the dash light. I suspect that your using RGB dash leds are on one channel and the CCU/console on another. In respect to the IR Remote, are you using a common Anode or Cathode?
Now the purpose of this thread originally was to gain understanding of what I could have screwed up to cause a puff of smoke to come from the back of the dash-cluster and has skewed into the area of, "Dash Cluster light modernization". This would be a good mod to make to an almost 30 year old car. Although I can't totally focus on this other than currently getting the dash lights working again for other issues are more pressing such as quarter-panel rust that won't stop, sheet metal to form and weld in and to get the sun-roof water to drain correctly and to exit the car rather than rust out the fender. So, I guess I have to put this into prospective, this will be a cool mod but I can't let it stop me from fixing the immediate issues for satety before getting into a new direction and feature modification.

I had my since new, threat it like it's my 2nd wife (that's what my wife says ) & it's 26yrs old with collector plates now.

I thought maybe you just wanted to add the 5-led bulbs & octopus cable for leds only. But if you are interested in modernizing, I'll find the threads I did for these mods from BW & post them here, have a lot of info in them you'll find useful.

When I did mine, the 44 key version wasn't available, it'll work.
Just make sure you buy the controller with the led strip from the same guy (not separately). If you go for "common anode" controller, make sure you get common anode RGB led strips, vise versa with common cathode, won't work if mixed. I think I bought common anode.

This is all the modernization I did to the car, otherwise completely stock...collector status requirement.

http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w201-190-class/1467935-instrument-cluster-lighting-upgrade.html

http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w201-190-class/1521019-will-interesting.html

http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w126-s-se-sec-sel-sd/1564298-front-dome-courtesy-light.html

http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w201-190-class/1493634-wtb-center-upper-console.html