of the various remedies for low lighting of dash, one post mentioned bypassing the dimmer and remarked how super bright his dash became. I didn't see any follow up post so dont' know if this solution made his clear plastic brown.
another post mentioned using higher wattage bulbs but the poster noticed a distinct elevation in heat and swapped back the old bulbs. so my question is if you install higher wattage bulbs, can't you turn down the dimmer just a bit and have more light yet not enough to cause a meltdown?
by the way, my car is a 1985 380sl.
jack

ive tried just about every light upgrade i could find and im now back to the 3w stock ones....the 5w bulbs started melting the plastic housing around them...LED's are a waste of time too, IMO...tried em

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1985 300SD 192,000miles...Astral silver/ Grey MbTex

1983 300D 194,000miles...White/Tan MbTex...my newest addiction

I'm not an expert, but I think the dimmer switch works by 'sending' current (voltage?) to a resistor instead of the bulb filament, so the resistor heats up instead of the bulb. So theoretically, a higher wattage bulb dimmed down to the level of the stock wattage bulb should radiate the same heat. Possibly some dimmed position between that and maximum would offer more light and also more heat, but not enough to melt adjacent plastic.

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1986 560SL
2002 Toyota Camry
1993 Lexus

I got the 124 dash light upgrade kit sold by these guys:

http://www.**************.com/

IMHO it yielded a significant improvement. I also bypassed the dimmer switch because it wasn't working right, but that didn't seem to make the lighting brighter, it just makes it what it was on the brightest setting of the dimmer. Some people say these upgrade bulbs don't work, but they certainly did for me. I have also heard that the earlier 124s (like my '87 300E) have dash illumination that is worse than the latter ones, and these not improve lighting on later 124s nearly as much as on earlier ones, but that is just a guess.

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2005 Mercedes C230k sport sedan, 6 speed
1987 Porsche 924S - 968-engined track car

Higher wattage bulbs will also put more load on the dimmer switch which has a wattage rating itself.

my vote is the correct leds....

i can not think of the exact ones i ended up installing but they are amazing....no heat, super long life....and green to match my sony head unit...no problems with dimmer, and the ip glows a nice indiglo green across my white face gauges....

super bright wide angle leds....
jake

I've been working on some burl instrument panels for 107's, and I have a lot of them to play with - the next project is to put 11,000mcd white LED's in to replace the tiny bulbs for the instrument illuminiation. I might have to do some creative shaping of the plastic of the LED to make the light more wide-angle - one trick I've seen is an "inverted cone" - a dimple in the top of the LED.

I've also got 13000 mcd green LED's to try out for the blinkers - I can't see them (much less hear the blinker) in the summer with the top down. I hate looking like an idiot, making right hand turns around the world...

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86 560SL
With homebrew first gear start!
85 380SL
Daily Driver Project

http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl/mercedes.htm