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I thought I'd post up my shift light install. The shift light came from Chippernut.com, it's a nice unit, works well but I've had this sitting around awhile because I didn't know how to mount the leds. It comes with a led strip with adhesive backing but doesn't come with any sort of housing for the leds. You could just slap the strip to the dash somewhere hillbilly style but I wanted it to look good as well as function. So with some recent down time I thought I'd jump back on this project and think of a way to mount them. Anyways what I came up with was to mount them behind the instrument bezel and drill holes to the leds and fill the holes with led light pipes. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, definitely came out better than my recent self haircut. Was easy to do also, tell me what you think? Too rice maybe? I do take the car for track days a couple times a year and think it will work great for that application.
Looks good, but I've never understood shift lights honestly.
After getting familiar with the car, usually just a few hundred miles, I can shift by sound very accurately. Am I alone here?
I've seen vids of guys trying to shift by shift light and they waste time bouncing off the rev limiter
Do you have any photos of this? I can't visualize what you are talking about and looking to install my shift light this weekend.
I don't have a photo but below is the connector, pin A17, white wire, is the tach signal. The connector is vertical with A17 towards the top of the dash. Unfortunately there are 3 other white wires in the connector. Good luck.
Looks good, but I've never understood shift lights honestly.
After getting familiar with the car, usually just a few hundred miles, I can shift by sound very accurately. Am I alone here?
I've seen vids of guys trying to shift by shift light and they waste time bouncing off the rev limiter
Staying off the limiter is dead easy on cars that lose torque as they approach the rev limit. You feel the acceleration diminishing and that's your signal to shift. But when engine mods give you a torque curve hardly tapers, the rev limit sneaks up on you. In theory it's just a matter of listening to the RPM, but on a road course where I'm already busy managing line choice, traction, and maybe traffic, staying off the limiter is harder than I would have guessed.
I fixed that on my Subaru by raising the limit to 8000.
I raised the limit in my C5 to 7000 but I still run into it sometimes. Raising it another 500 would cost more than I want to spend, so I've been thinking of adding a shift light. This thread is timely.
Thanks for the post! I'd like to know more about the LEDs and light pipe mounting. If you have pics and / or details I'd appreciate you posting them
The LED light pipes are Bivar p/n PLP5-2-125, they are .125" long which matches the thickness of the bezel perfect. You can drill the holes with a #22 drill bit and they press in by hand, I did not have to glue them. The hardest part will be making the holes in a nice straight line and keeping the spacing just right. The bezel is a curvy organic shape that would be difficult to set up in a vise. What I did was make a drilling template out of some thin aluminum, I think the LEDs were 7mm apart IIRC, then bend the aluminum to the contour of the bezel and use that as a guide to drill my holes. When I was finished drilling the holes I used the aluminum as a backing for the LED strip which has self-adhesive tape on the back side. There is just enough of a recess under the bezel for the LEDs and the aluminum. I attached the LED strip with the aluminum backing to the bezel with JB weld plastic epoxy.
LEDs and aluminum drill template
Light pipes installed. There was some raised print on the underside of the bezel I filed down.
Sorry, I know this is an old thread, but I have a question. You said that this has a dimming function. Could you tell me what wire and where it’s located that you hooked up to?
This is cool and all, but seems like a bit of work. I had my tuner use the "1 to 4" light as my shift light since my skip shift is disabled. It comes on at 6800rpm.
My shift light install
