My instrument lights stopped working a few weeks ago. I decided to replace the high voltage florescent black lights with UV LEDs. Here's how I did it:

I bought these UV LEDs from superbright LEDs. They are dimmable 12v:

https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...ens/2511/2104/

I won't go into how to remove the panel and disassemble it, you can find that in other posts.

These come with a wedge socket, you will need to solder wires onto the terminals on the socket. It doesn't matter what polarity you use, the bulbs run either way.



Remove the high voltage power supply, connector and lights.

I drilled a small hole in the end of the wedge connector, then drilled a small hole on the instrument panel in front of the mirror and attached the lights with a screw. I didn't have screws short enough to keep them from pushing the bulb out, so I put them in about half way. The clear plastic cover will hit the screw head and the bulb, will need to push the screw head in past the lip of the clear plastic.



Wiring. Wire the bulbs into the pink wire (12v+ when key on) and the white wire (~variable ground through instrument dimmer switch) next to the purple wire on the instrument panel connector. I just pigtailed the wires together (connector, harness, led wires) with a crimp type connector. The attached picture shows the white wire pointed to by a pen.



Reassemble. The lights will burn when the ignition is on (non-dimmable) and when the parking/headlight switch is on with the ignition on (dimmable/on/off via the dimmer ****). Bright and dim shown.

 

This is awesome, thanks heaps for posting. The UV tubes and cluster inverter are discontinued and very difficult to find, so this makes sense. You also won't have to worry about the UV tubes burning out in the future. I have a couple of questions for you:

Are you happy with the colour output? From your pictures, the glow is not 'even' across the entire display, but still sufficient in my opinion.

Did you remove the inverter and related fluresent tube wiring harnesses, or leave them attached to the cluster unpowered?

Do you think adding additional UV LEDs would achieve a better affect? would this even be possible?

In theory, could you use other colour LEDs? - Given the cluster paint 'glows' from the effects of the UV I would assume the answer is no, but would be good to confirm this.

 

 

I considered buying LED strip lights and cutting them to closely approximate the output from the fluorescent lamps, but these were convenient. I removed all the old stuff.

I did buy four of these and was planning on doing that but two seemed pretty bright and I was afraid the display was going to be too bright with four. It is much brighter near the edges, you might be able to get a better distribution of light if they were oriented differently. This was easiest given what I had available in the garage to mount them.

The dimmer doesn't work in a linear fashion, I checked it with my trusty 70s vintage analog Radio Shack multi-meter and the voltage drops off rapidly. From what I understand, it's a pulse width modulated circuit and I wasn't sure what the effect would be on the LEDs (I'm much better at power point than electrical engineering these days).

As for using other colors, it comes down to spectral output of the diodes and the color of the instrument face. Looks to be orange, white and black...get too far out of band and it won't reflect, but it would be interesting to see what works.

 

Thanks for the details! How does the dimmer function work with your other interior lighting? About how far on the dimmer **** would you turn before the display goes completely dark?

I'm looking at replacing all my interior switches and buttons with LEDs but am concerned about it being to bright and the dimmer function not working, so would love any feedback you could give me about this. I've had a guts full of incandesent bulbs blowing, expecially the PITA process you have to go through to replace some of them. If I could switch over to long lasting LEDs it would be much better/reliable IMO.

 

Great minds think alike! I had the same idea in case my UV tubes ever die. My idea was to use a small breadboard with an array of the small LEDs, which I hope would imitate the glow of the tubes a little better.

 

WOW!!! EXCELLENT WORK and a hell of a great post!!

Bill

 

Thanks Bill coming from you that's a real complement...I've cruised a lot of your posts for electrical info.

 

This looks like it cuts off about midpoint with the **** which makes sense, ~4volts. It depends on the total circuit and the voltage drop, but yeah..I figured the lifetime of these LEDs exceeds the car. I've thought about replacing mine as well. I use LEDs on the old Honda motorcycles that I've restored since the alternators on those barely put out enough power for the points ignition, let alone the lights.

 

 

so I’ve been researching this for a few days now as I want a fully red led interior. I doubt other colors would work very well on a stock dash, but if you replaced the plates with something like white then the colors would bounce off of those and leave the numbers and markings dark. Kind of an inversion at that point. Just a thought.