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.

https://www.superbrightleds.com/vehicle/1981-mercedes-benz-300d-vehicle-led-lights?make=49&model=101&year=1981

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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

Game over. Thanks Mike.

Nice options here too re: color temperature.

I see options for canbus and non-canbus –are there pro/cons?

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1981 240D 4sp manual. Ivory White.

No need for CANBUS on your '81. You don't have any feed back/sensors in your electrical systems.

"CAN bus is a set of 2 electrical wires (CAN_Low & CAN_High) in the car network where information can be sent to and from ECUs. The network inside the car that allows ECUs to communicate with each other is called CAN (Controller Area Network)."


https://www.earth2.digital/blog/what-is-vehicle-can-bus-ecu-evoque-adam-ali.html

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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

Perfect, thanks again.

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1981 240D 4sp manual. Ivory White.

What about on a 85sd? I’ve been to do some LED’s. I have 2 85sd 1 is a Cali and the other Federal. The federal has the SRS still, would that affect anything? Just finished a complete exhaust on it yesterday so I’m looking forward to spending some time with my butt in the 💺.
Thanks greazer2b

No CANBUS.

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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

Hi Peachparts Diesel friends.

Bruce here from northern CA. 1983 300d w123 with 357K miles. Tried putting LEDs into my cluster last week, with LED bulbs recommended here on the forum from LEDlight.com. https://www.ledlight.com/t10_wedge_3_watt_4_5630_led_bulb_12v_dc.aspx Blew out fuse #1 twice. My friend who i was working with tried one of those in his gas (not diesel) W123 same vintage. Started to smoke. Wondering if these bulbs are simply too "tall" and create a short inside the light channel?

I've now ordered similar LED bulbs in 2 parallel paths: 1) from Super bright lights: https://www.superbrightleds.com/194-led-bulb-5-smd-led-tower-miniature-wedge-retrofit-car-194-xhp5-car, and 2) "simpler" Sylvania LEDs on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079ZC1GM6?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details.

Amazon/Sylvanias will go in tomorrow...if bright enough, I'll stop there.

Any thoughts/experiences on these various bulbs?

Thanks all, BD

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1983 300D

BD ;

Take those that blew the fuse out then rotate then 180 degrees and re install .

Many are polarity sensitive .

The Sylvania ones you showed typically have a small painted dot on one side, this indicates the 'hot' or positive side......

Be aware that many LED bulbs don't have a focused light pattern and so will not light up the lens well .

This doesn't mean LED's don't work it means you need to figure out which specific brand / design of LED will work properly in your car ~ a tiny but super bright red dot taillight isn't very safe .

I'm still sorting this out on some of my oldies .

In general the more LED chips the better the bulb will work -but- the reflector and lens make difference too .

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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

Thanks Nate. I'm only going to put LEDs in the cluster, not elsewhere in the car. As for polarity, we did rotate them after the first "fuse blow", but that didn't make a difference.

I'll try installing the sylvania LEDs tomorrow and report back here.

Intersting "find" since this afternoon...this guy in his YouTube video on changing his cluster lights in a W123 is clipping the wiring off one side of the bulb bottom.

Does this resonate and/or make sense to any of you folks that have been down this (not well lit) road?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5WjBcB_q88

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1983 300D

That's a good video, thanx .

It makes perfect sense to me .

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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

LED light update: SUCCESS!

It turns out the original LED lights from LEDllght.com (product 57842) do work. From the Youtube video in my previous post, we clipped the metal off one side of the bulb base - that is evidently the secret on making LED bulbs work in a W123 cluster. At least for the gentleman that created his video and for me.

Happy to have better and brighter lights in my dash. Good luck to the rest of you as you upgrade your own dash lights to LED.

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1983 300D

I want to try this too .

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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

as these cars age, chasis grounds don't work do to broken unibody. I add at least two more

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1999 w140, quit voting to old, and to old to fight, a god damned veteran