I have been working for a while to complete this tech article. It is still in draft form and I am sure there are spelling errors and so forth. Anyways check it out and tell me any suggestion or comments you have.

http://www.apmracing.net/lukeS/led/LED.htm

 

Looks good. One mistake I noticed was you put "peace" instead of "piece" in the step where you center the LED with plastic. How long did it take you to do all the soldering and such? Any pics of it lit up?

 

If you had a pic of what they look like when the LEDs are active, that would be good. I've seen a lot of aftermarket LED dash setups and haven't been too fond of them, but I have yet to see it on a stock dash...

 

fixed the word "piece". I could not get a good picture of the dash. This is all i have (looks better in real life)..



hopefully i will get some better pics soon with my friends digital camara

 

Very well done Luke! You definitely hit all the high points. You get my vote!

One thing - if you should decide to make these commercially you could, with a little extra work, use a diode bridge (like a bridge rectifier in an AC power supply) with the LED and resistor on its ouput and input to the terminals on the socket. This would eliminate the need to be polarity sensitive when installing the sockets and just require recalculating the resistor value with around 1.3-1.4 volts more for the the LED value. A complication you may not wish to deal with, just a thought :-).

I gather electronics is an interest of yours :-).

 

One quick thing: Looks good, but the convention you state for which terminal is the (+) on an LED isn't always true. From what I know, there is a flat spot on the edge of each LED which denotes the negative side, but that might not be universal either. You might want to at least mention that in the article if you're going to include that 'question'. Hope that helps --Jim--

 

Very good. Comprehensive, and including a little background, the formulas, part numbers, and prices was a plus. Nice work.

 

Wow that looks great. I like the tech article its very informative. This would be a great upgrade for my stock gauges.

 

Looks good, however your grammar needs some improvement.

The picture looks great, I'd like to see this with whiteface gauges, I'd probably make them look 1000x better.

 

If I think I can figure it all out, I might put them in when I install my gauges.

 

OMG ! ! ! That is awsome, like un4givin said, can't wait to see with wfg's

 

Very nice article. Sure beats putting in 194NA bulbs in place of the clear ones

Since I commute 600 miles a week, I've pretty much parked the IROC and it really hasn't been getting much attention the past few years.

This just might be the thing to bring us back together. Thanks for the article. Again, nice job.

 

"Blackened" is doing it on his 90-92 dash now here is a pic of the work in progress:

 

so what is the point of this? it makes the gauges super bright? my dash lights are attached to the dimmer switch. Is that wrong? seems kind of odd to me.

 

Well yeah.. THAT... plus it makes it look blue ! The above pic is really nothing what it looks like in real life. Damn I wish I had a better camera. I guess this 500 dollar Sony Mavica isnt enuff ! lol

 

Looks good...I'd rather have a set of indiglo faces though...

 

Damn blackened! That looks killer! How long has that taken you so far?

 

89 Iroc Z:

Are there differences between the bulbs used in the '89 and the '87? I ask this because my '87 uses 194 type bulbs. The sockets that appear in the photos in your article look a bit different.

Thanks.

 

How much for you to do the sockets? Also, do they dim when you turn the switch or is it just an on or off thing?

Mark

 

I will make them for $15 if you sent me the LED's sockets and resistors.
Or if you want me to buy the LED's I will charge $20 plus the cost of the LED's and bulb sockets.

No the dimmer will not work; they will cut off when you hit a certain point when turning the ****.

 

And updated pic of "Blackened" 90-92 dash. He is not finished yet and the pic does not show the color good at all.