Got tired of the dim instruments lighting in my cars. By-passing the rheostat and freshening up the needles helped but the available light was poor at best. I guess my old eyes are just tired.

Decided to switch to LED's.

Stock/OEM lighting.



Single LED on right, OEM on left. BIG difference in visibility!



Tried the single LED's for the lighting. Better but had a couple of less lit areas. Note the center of the speedometer and the outer edges of the gauges.



The 5 LED bulb on the left, the single LED on the right. Just wanted a comparison.



The stock 194 bulbs replaced with the comparable 5 LED bulbs.



A plus is the fact the 5 LED bulbs raised the temperature of the cluster mounting to 128 F after a steady hour of use whereas the standard bulb raised the temperature to 165 F after only five minutes of use. Them little suckers were toasty to my fingers when I changed them.

Battery voltage was at a steady 12.7 Volts. I used my CTek charger on the maintenance mode to ensure a constant voltage.

Before anyone asks, no, that is NOT the correct mileage. The speedometer had been repaired/replaced in '08 at 161xxx miles and hadn't worked in who knows how long or was even correct. Wasn't working when the present owner bought the car and when I repaired the odometer gear I inadvertently rolled back the odo one complete digit (add 111111 to the reading). Didn't notice it until after I had the cluster re-assembled. Not having the records to the car I wasn't going to pull it all apart again since there is no way anyone would believe the car has only 165K on it. I'd peg the car at 200 K+ simply due to the amount of work I've done to it.

The small glare/reflection of lights above the cluster is due to the panel not being seated fully into the dash.

__________________
“Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames.”
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