After looking and looking, I couldn't find any sort of info for replacing these bulbs. Currently, my high beam indicator and MIL bulbs are burned out, so lacking any sort of online guidance, I figured I'd tear into it myself.

I'll assume if you've decided to do this yourself, you already know how to get your gauge cluster out. If not, there *are* a million threads on that.

Instrument cluster removal is about a 30 minute job. No big deal.

On to the important stuff. Order a pizza.

Place your gauge cluster on your kitchen table



The first thing you'll have to do is remove those HIGH VOLTAGE channels. They're covering the wiring that goes to the UV bulbs. They're held in place by plastic clips that you just have to lightly bend back.




Disconnect all those wiring connectors. One on each side of the UV inverter, one on each side for HUD/DIC, and the lower green connector that supplies power and whatnot to the inverter.



There are four brass colored screws holding the inverter/coverplate onto the gauge pod. Remove those. Don't bother removing the four screws holding the inverter's metal cover plate. It's not necessary. There are also several more of those clip tabs that you'll have to gently pry and then you can remove the whole plate.



Next, the circuit board has to go. BEFORE YOU TRY TO LIFT IT: There are two small wiring connectors on each side. One has two wires, the other has 8. Disconnect those from the board.

Here's the speaker connector. Disconnect it.



Here's the other one. Disconnect it too.



Once you've done that, the board flips up and over and will hold itself in place pretty well.



Each of these black bases are your indicator and warning bulbs. There are 14 in total. Might as well do 'em all.



Once you've gotten to this point, that pizza you ordered should be getting pretty close!

That's as far as I've gotten so far. Gotta figure out if I can find an LED replacement for these things or if I've just gotta stick with incandescent. Will update once I learn more.

 

Got a closer look at the bulbs after pulling them out of the cluster.

We've got TSD 74 and NHO 74B. TSD 74 is easy enough to find out about online, it's a T5 socket bulb, but NHO 74B doesn't seem to come up. Far as I can tell, they look to be interchangeable. I switched the two different bulbs around in one base and tried it on a 12V source and both bulbs lit up, so yeah, you can probably replace them all with one type of bulb.

Now it's time to order some lights.

 

Time for the important information! Here's the polarity for the gauge cluster warning lights if you want to go with LED. White marks are LED +





The only one I can't verify with absolute certainty is the 1-4 shift light (marked "14" on the back of the cluster) because I've disabled it through the PCM. The brake warning light + is on the same circuit path, though, so it should be correct.

 

Great write up. After days you saved me. So if I use TSD74 on all there should be no issues? I am hesitant using led but seems you got it straight? Will using Blue change the face? if not I would just go with white.
Thanks

 

Great write-up. Thanks for the detailed pics too.

This is a six month old thread, but apparently not many saw this writeup at the time and it gives some good info on replacing the bulbs.

 

This is awesome!! thanks heaps for sharing.

Does anyone know the part number for the fluresent tube bulb? Are these even replacable?

 

very interesting

 

Great job. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

 

Thanks for the great info.

 

Great job and taught me a valuable lesson on changing over to LED lights on my instrument cluster!!!

 

Why is there no mention of the UV bulbs? Seems pretty obsurd that you have to fork out thousands of dollars for a new IPC if one of the bulbs blows...

 

I used 37LL bulbs in my dash. Its a canadian tire part #

 

Question: I assume that the speaker on the back of the cluster is for the "beeps" that one hears when pushing the DIC buttons? Does it do anything else? I'd like to delete the "beep" sound as I find it rather annoying.

 

There look to be 2 different size sockets. Did someone know what is that bigger socket? I hear smaller is Toshiba v2 socket.

 

Fantastic post.

Thank you for taking the time to mark the positive polarity on the bulbs. Knowing which way they faced on the unit was a huge time and frustration saver. Thank you again.
I did find some led bulbs that actually have the "+" and "-" marked on them ( ). I also hooked up a 9v battery to test the bulbs prior to installment. Not one of them failed.

Question.

Wondering if anyone has had an issue, post installment of led bulbs, with the Check Engine Light staying on dimly lit? When starting the engine, the light shines bright as it should on its initial test with the rest of the lights, but then reverts to a dull glow. Turning the dimmer switch does not change it. No other lights have this issue.
No issues with incandescent prior to switch over and no issues with the car.
No codes are showing up.

 

I switched my warning lights to led about a year ago and no issues with lights dimly lit, although I thought the mph light was to bright.

I know some LEDs will dimly light with tiny amounts of residual current, and seems to be hit and miss depending on the led. Haven't had the issue with my c5 but have seen it in other cars.

 

Thank you.
I agree with the MPH (KPH here in the Canadalands) light being bright. Seems not so bad at night though.
I'm getting a new stereo installed in May, so perhaps I'll talk with the install fellow about the dim engine light. I agree with you about some bulbs remaining lit...my Kia map lights do the same after I changed to LED.

 

I really found the kph, high beam and signal lights way too bright. The bulbs I put in each have 3 LEDs...so, I marked the top LED that faces the driver with a black marker leaving the side LEDs to light the unit. This worked like a charm. Took the edge of the brightness, but still adequate.

Update: Wasn't happy with the signal LED lights and the mint green it displayed. Changed them out with green LED bulbs and again blackened the top bulb. Now I have a nice dark green signal light.

 

Yes, I just did this mod and I have a very faintly lit Check Engine Light as well as the 1-4 Shift light. The MPH is blindingly bright as well. I’m thinking about just swapping the LEDs back out with new incandescent bulbs to avoid the weirdness. The originals lasted almost 20 years, so longevity shouldn’t be a problem.

My only question is about the 2 sizes of original bulb. I know one is a T5, but the other one is a mystery. The LEDs i ordered on Amazon all fit in the larger bases as well as the smaller ones, so am I correct in assuming that T5 incandescents should be ok for all 14 of them?

Thanks, Gents!

A HUGE thank you to @shock6906 for the polarity info AND the awesome step-by-step write up on the cluster bulbs!

 

Moving this old, but very informative thread over to C5 Tech.