Festoon typ LED bulbs are cheap and easy to find, I was in an older electronics store and noticed an LED display that had 12 segment cool white festoon typ LED's and bought the two the had, installed them in my '82 240D's front & rear dome lights, WOW what an improvement plus as mentioned : they'll never run the battery dead .

I have to see if I can talk them into ordering more, they said it was 'D' stock : sell until gone and don't re order .

I have two more W123's I want these in .

I need a link to the LED dashbulbs.....

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

I've changed every bulb in my '85 300D to LED, with the exception of...

• Headlights*
• Fog Lights**
• High Beam Indicator light at Instrument Cluster

*Headlights have been converted from sealed beam to a 9007 halogen.
**When my factory sealed beam Bosch amber lights go out, I'll change them to LED as well.

The blinker LEDs required load resistors on each light to work right. Without the load resistors 1 LED blinker causes 'hyper-flash', changing both stops flashing altogether.

I put the regular bulb back into the High Beam Indicator on the dash because the LED was just way too bright.

I would highly recommend the conversion to LEDs on the Instrument Cluster, you know how dull the guage lights are and I could barely see the Glow Plug light during the day - not anymore.

The fog lights are not sealed beams, they use an H3 bulb. I discovered this after I bought 5.75" H4 conversion housings and modified them to fit the fog light location. Would have been a lot easier to just put in H3 LED bulbs in the OG housing.

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Milan Brown 1979 240D, rebuilt OM617.952 turbo diesel, rebuilt 722.315 transmission - engine spun a rod bearing

1979 300SD, ~90k original miles, all stock

You're right!

My old 1980 300D had sealed beams so I assumed my '85 did as well. I just recently replaced the old halogen H3 with an amber LED H3. I don't think it's quite as bright but the color is perfect and I use them for the look much more than for fog.

? Pictures ?. links to these LED's ? .

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

An LED won't conduct electricity backwards* so I doubt putting it in the wrong way burned anything up.
I thought about doing LEDs in mine, but I actually like the charm of old dim gauge clusters, I find a lot of newer cars are way too bright. Maybe it's because most of my cars are old piles of junk, so it's familiar...

How do you like the H4/9007 headlight conversions? The sealed beams are extremely abysmal and I need to do something about it.

*I mean, it will, but the reverse breakdown voltage is probably in the hundreds of volts and it has a limiting resistor anyway...

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1984 300TD -- summer daily driver
Many others that aren't Mercedes...

Those of you with working LED dash, trunk, or dome lights -which did you buy?
(Amazon links would be killer)

In all the reading I’ve done, half say they cause issues, half couldn’t be happier.
I cannot find a consensus.

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1981 240D 4sp manual. Ivory White.

In my experience, issues only really occur with with cheap Chinese LEDs. I splurged on my LED brake lights, turn signals and dash lights and am very happy with the results.

I purchased the Zevo LED lights for the brake and turns from Autozone. About $10/bulb, but they are bright and caused precisely 0 issues with my 240D. The dash lights I purchased from eBay and had to modify them to fit the knobs and housings (plastic base too wide, shaved it down with a dremel).

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Milan Brown 1979 240D, rebuilt OM617.952 turbo diesel, rebuilt 722.315 transmission - engine spun a rod bearing

1979 300SD, ~90k original miles, all stock

I have always understood that Mercedes vehicles are very sensitive to the ohm (resistance) rating of light bulbs, especially tail lights. My only issue with any of the bulbs in my W123 cars has been the instrument cluster lights. I tried LED bulbs once but they were too bright so went back to the OEM bulbs.

Converting W115, W123, W126 instrument cluster lighting.

The "SuperBright" LED bulbs are listed in the thread and another source from Amazon is the: YITAMOTOR White T10 194 LED Light Bulb 6000K

I ended up using the Yitamotor ones but the SuperBright ones are a good choice.

Don't get hung up on the "Made in China" rhetoric because almost ALL of the LED's are sourced from China. The only US made bulb I found was the Sylvania line and due to the plastic cover on them I don't think they will fit in the instrument cover sockets.

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“Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames.”
― Brian P. Cleary, You Oughta Know By Now

I bought them from Pep Boys initially, they seemed to wok fine and I discovered they were sold at 1/2 price in less fancy packages on the ends of the gondolas....

My brother bought lots of them off E-Bay directly from China and a few have failed over time (two or three years), none failed completely, just a segment or two .

I cannot impress how much better they work -if- you bother to research and buy the ones with more actual LEDs than the cheaper ones have.....

Price remains the same too, you just have to look and look, and.....

Sorry I didn't save the links .

For those who like me have generator powered or vintage Japanese vehicles that use 18 ~ 20 gauge wires and impossibly weak alternators, 6 volt systems and so on LEDs are THE solution ! they draw so little current they actually brighten up the headlamp on old Motocycles and so on .

Remember : you cannot use a LED bulb in the brake lights as it'll prevent the cruise control from operating and often you can only use LEDs in one end of the turn signals else they won't blink .

I've not yet done the dash lights, I can't see how they could be too bright .

You're going to LOVE how well your trunk and glovebox lamps work with LEDs .

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

Yes... thank you for this. There's nothing I enjoy less than rolling the dice and pulling my instrument cluster. Speedo cable? Oil pressure sender? Break the dodgy soldering on the temp/fuel gauge? Sleeping dogs, etc.

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1981 240D 4sp manual. Ivory White.

In reality you're unlikely to make things worse and if you're diligent and careful you'll make things remarkably better.....

I've re glued the clear plastic 'glass' piece using 'Gorilla Glue' to good effect and even re glued those often broken tube shaped supports that the self tapping screws go into, the broken off bits are normally down inside the binnacle, work over a light colored towel or old pillow case, sheet etc. so you don't loose parts/screws/bits....

Then I always wash and dry the entire bare binnacle then polish every bit of it with plastic polish by Meguiar's, this will make the dash lights work well even with standard bulbs, you'll of course need to clean them as always covered in greasy dust plus solder a jumper wire to the dash lamp dimmer even if it works.....

_YOU_ can do this ~ I was a nervous Nellie the first time and yes, I broke a few parts but that's part and parcel of the learning curve to becoming a good DIY'er .

Plenty of good used binnacles on you-know-where but be sure to LOOK CLOSELY before paying more than .25 CENTS as many sellers are flat liars .

DO NOT TOUCH THE GAUGE FACES WITH YOUR FINGERS ! .

Use slotted plastic wrap / old baggies to cover the face before re painting the needles .

Like some others here I only chime in on the jobs I've done .

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-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better

It's a fair point you make Nate. I have pulled it over 20 times at this point and everything finally works (and is painted).

The truth is, it's the speedo cable that gives me the most grief. I finally have ZERO bounce happening. Every time I remove that thing, I suppose that's where I'm really rolling the dice. Point being, I really want to make sure I get the lights right =)

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1981 240D 4sp manual. Ivory White.

Finished the dash, now I'm ready to find LEDS for glove, cabin and trunk in particular.
Still cannot find the correct size anywhere online.

Who's swapped their trunk to LED? What size?

Can anyone help?

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1981 240D 4sp manual. Ivory White.