el or white face gauges

[artimusprime]

does anyone know where to get el, reverse or white face gauges for an 83 300 sd?

[Richard Eldridge]

Do a search on crhenkel in this forum for details.

Good luck!

[MTI]

In the past 30 days there was a seller on Ebay with EL faces for Mercedes for approx. $60 on a "Buy It Now." That would be a new low for EL faces.

[artimusprime]

gauges found on canadian ebay... ebaymotors.ca .... should get mine in soon :p

go with the white faced gauges. let's not forget we drive German luxury cars and not Honda's...stay away from the glow gauges...

Just my $.02

[MTI]

Opps, looks like Daimer didn't get the memo about EL gauges!

Appears to be on a newer style Mercedes...most likely a sports car...

I suppose my comment was to anyone with pre-90's Benz's...they don't belong in older styles...

[MTI]

I can only say, and this is from experience with the lighting (or lack thereof) of the cluster in the W201 . . .


Better to light a candle than curse the darkness!

Um all right. So you advocate the use of eBay EL gauges? I've always said to each their own, but these are luxury cars, not ricers...

[Greg in Oz]

What is it with everyone wanting white faced and bright instruments and gauges? I had the use of an E500 Avantgarde (W211) for a day and I thought the white faced instruments sucked! Give me the easy to read black ones in my W201, 124 and 107 any day. As for criticisms of the early guages not being bright enough, I can't understand that. I actually run mine backed off considerably from full brightness. At full brightness they are too distracting. I only want to see them when I glance at them. The rest of the time I am only interested in what's going on outside the car. Let's face it, for night driving, particularly in rural areas with low ambient light, you want your eyes accustomed to a low light level, not blinded by bright lights and instruments within the car. I see other cars in the traffic with instruments lit up like an amusement park in all sorts of horrible colours. Sorry, for me the W124 instruments are about as good as it gets.

[artimusprime]

thanks for your 2 cents worth on the gauges... mind you, i am not an advocate of the ricers with their stickers that supposedly mean performance and quality or neon under-body kits or anything of the sort... i am however into being able to being able to see my instruments without the aid of night vision googles... since the aforementioned gauges on ebay are adjustable (intensity and color) i will at last be able to see and keep with the overall look of the vehicle, which is white... i am in most cases an oe guy (no hula hoops for rims, thank you very much! ) but i will make a slight compromise when it comes to safety and ergonomics...

[speedy300Dturbo]

If you can't see your gauges at night, you should replace the bulbs (with correct wattage ones unless you want to melt the prisms), clean the prisms, and replace the rheostat.

[MTI]

Originally posted by speedy300Dturbo
If you can't see your gauges at night, you should replace the bulbs (with correct wattage ones unless you want to melt the prisms), clean the prisms, and replace the rheostat.

Been there, done that, didn't work. The plastic "prisms" in the W201 and W124 clusters are a weak design. In addition, I went to white gauge faces in hopes of brightening the cluster up, but that was only a slightly better improvement. Then I added Raybrig blue/white bulbs for a bit more illumination. Even now, the trip odometer is barely visible at night. Currently I have two plans for the cluster "black hole" . . . a variable brightness LED array mounted at the top of the cluster, behind the bars at the top, or the EL faces.