ok so first off i bought a set of 4 amber led 194's to replace the standard bulbs in my cluster and dang big diff!. now i have a question... does anyone know how to get rid of the hot spots that led's cause? its not that big of a deal to me but I would like them to light evenly. i will post a picture later when i have a camera but any help is appreciated.

 

I went around and searched a little on the subject. It appears as though the hot spots are directly related to the quality of the LED's you have. I bought some cheap hyper white one's I ended up using in my corner lamps on ebay and gave a few to my cousin to put in his gauge cluster, hot spots are visible. I guess if you dish out a little more $$$ on some LED's that disperse light evenly on every side of the bulb the hot spots will be less noticeable or non existent. I ran with just regular (red) tinted 194 bulbs and I have no hot spots, but I suppose they're not quite as bright as some quality red LED's would be.

Good luck.

 

yea i agree i bought them from superbrightleds.com so they are high quality but i didnt see that they were narrow angle leds not wide angle like i thought. even though they were only about $18 but i guess if i buy new ones its not a total loss because our sidemarkers are 194's as well so if i buy new ones it would put me closer to my goal of having as many led's as possible because im a geek and love leds but i have also heard that there are things that can be done to dissipate the led's light i just cant remember what it is




also yes i know its off topic but where did you get your aluminum gauge surrounds?

 

you should get these
http://www.automotivelightingusa.com...oducts_id=1030

they light up everything

 

http://www.motostorm.com/gpage2.html1.html

 

From my experience no LED's have been able to eliminate hot spots. And I've tried many different types having done it the first time about 6 years ago. Not saying there isn't the 'eureka bulb' out there, but I haven't found it yet.

 

well i got an idea and decided to rip my dash apart to try something and it worked to a point. i took them out and sanded them down on ther sides to make them focus more than just out the front and it worked to light up the cold spots some more its not the end all fix but i might try something else. they also make wide angle leds that i will try because they are suposed to light up a 360* area and maybie with some mods i can get it all to light up


also thanks for the link pearl, just the way they look on your car made me love the way the look and now i just have to have a set lol

 

I wouldn't recommend getting those. I got em after I already replaced all my 194 gauge bulbs with 5-led hyperwhite bulbs from superbrightleds.com just to experiment, but those turned out to be dim as hell compared to the leds. They were so bad that I ended up just using one of 4 in my glovebox, but it doesn't even do a good job lighting that.

 

Which ones did you get exactly from superbrightleds.com? They have so many choices with a lot of differences between the led's.

 

i bought the wled type 6 led and filed them down to make most of the dark spots go away. i love the way they look and i will be getting some red needles to realy set off the gauges

 

how do you do the needles?.. diff interested in doing red needles as well

 

i will be getting the importintelligence.com needle kit they have a 2 big needle and 2 small needle kit for around $70 or so and they have all diff colors to chose from

 

Holy crap, you must have a money tree growing in your yard.

 

hahahaha i flipping wish but i was working a lot of overtime the last 2 months so i have a little bit of cash saved for car stuff

 

I used superbrightleds too. I used them a few years ago and the wide leds worked great in gauges. No hot spots and they were bright. I used them in my Maxima and there are cold spots and they are not very bright at all. I tried taking a pic but they appear bada$$ in the pic. I need to change them out so hopefully someone here can post something that works very well.