so there is a how to in the stickies for led needles in a 97-99. i have a 95, and w/ the analog odometer and trip, it's much more crowded putting an led where the needle is inserted is not feasible. so i briefly documented what i did today w/ my gauges. you can check it on my cardomain
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/352601/11

or just read it here.

so i had some white 5mm 15000 mcd leds leftover from an interior project i had previously done and decided to do something different to my gauges. i was getting tired of my indiglo gauges that i had put in when i was younger, but i liked the white faces (gle's came w/ black-faced gauges). so, i cut the wires going to my indiglo gauge face overlays and installed some leds to light up the needles. here's a brief walk through:


take out your instrument cluster. look at the back. 95-96's should have 6 194 bulbs in the back with brown twist bases. you can twist those out, and take out a couple bulbs, you'll need to use some bases later.


take the gauges out of the cluster. each one is held by 3-4 screws on the back of the cluster, so just unscrew them, save the screws, and carefully take out each 4 of the gauges.


now, if you look carefully, there is clear plastic below each gauge face. it is designed in such a way that the light from the 6 194 bulbs you twisted out get redirected to the center of each of the 4 needles as well as the odometer and trip, so you can read those at night. now, on the smaller gauges (fuel level and engine temp), there are only 1 spot on the clear plastic that 'uptakes' light. on each the speedometer and the tach, there are 2 spots that 'uptake' light. that gives a total of 6 spots that take in light from a nearby light source. therefore i used 6 leds total, each pointing in the 'spot' as shown in this pic. then i secured it w/ some electrical tape. i also used a couple mini zip ties here and there. it's not an exact science, but it's a tight fit when u put everything back in, so be forewarned. that actually may be a good thing though, since the traction from wires in a tight space can help hold your leds where you want them. so use that to your advantage.
you can use how ever many you want, in any array you want, just make sure you double check your calculations so you don't blow something up later.
i used 2 series of 3 leds w/ a 100 ohm resistor in line. that's what worked out well for me, i divided the instrument cluster in half and used 1 194 socket on each side as a power supply to 3 leds wired in series.


just a sample pic of the back of the tach, 2 of the leds wired in series.

 

the nice thing about 95-96 instrument clusters is, once you run your wires out the back, put them in contact w/ the copper connections for the 194 bulbs, and then use an empty bulb holder and twist it in to secure your contacts. im not completely sure if terminals make a difference or not, but im fairly certain they do. you need to trace each of the two copper connections to see which one is + and which one is grnd.


this pic really doesn't do the needles justice. i guess the camera doesn't capture it well. for those WITHOUT indiglo gauge overlays like me, youre gauges will be more illuminated. because the gauge overlays completely block out light (normally light goes through the numbers and incremental markings), i can't see the numbers except where the needles are, which was the kind of effect i was going for. i thought it would be unique to only be able to see the numbers wherever the needle was running.
so back to this pic, in reality my needles don't seem to have as much as a 'glow' effect as captured in this picture, and i can see more numbers as well around where the needle tips are. even if i couldn't see them, it probably wouldn't matter to me since i've been driving this car for like 9 years and i know where the numbers are anyway.

so some things i would like to add to this. my needles are not like spaceship bright like some of the other 97-99 and other led projects i have seen, but i did not want them to be. just enough to see the numbers wherever the needles were running. if you want them really bright on the 95-96 gauges where you cannot put the led directly underneath the needle, i would suggest a few things: use brighter leds (mine were 15000mcd, which are pretty bright i think by themselves), and use a reflective tape instead of black electrical tape, which may help to contain some of the light in the clear plastic, and also sanding the color off the base of the needles may help them glow more (at least on gle's the needles are clear w/ a white base).

hope this helps.

 

Looks good man. I wonder what they look like in person.

 

I've never seen that before, but I'm liking it. So your gauge's don't light up, just the needles?

 

that's correct, if anybody else did this, their gauges would light up.
because i have indiglo overlays, light doesn't go through, and i clipped the wires running to the indiglos, so they don't light up blue or green or whatever rice color.

 

damn dude if only you could get the pics to look like what you actually see. any photographers got pointers for him?

 

damn that looks really nice...that be my project as well pretty soon!

 

would have looked WAY better if you would have kept your EL guage faces lit up. I got all excited at first because I had EL gauge faces just like yours and I really wanted to do the LED needle thing along with the EL faces.

Anyways, your needles look great. If you want to go back to working EL faces, LMK! I have a set just like yours laying around since I did my cluster swap.

 

Photo pointers? Put your Fstop all the way up, say 5.0-8.2 or so. Then turn the shutter speed down(slower to 1 second, not higher towards 1/1000 sec), and the ISO down(100-200).

So you are saying that I put my LEDs in the wrong spots? This is how I did mine:

 

no, if you have a digital odometer, that is how most people do it, and as a result, your needles will be brighter
the guys w/ the analog odometer, there is no room to put the led in that close of a proximity to the needle. so for the sake of uniformity, i put them all in the periphery on all 4 gauges.

 

well, i thought about that, having both, but i really just am sick of the blue or green indiglo color. a friend suggested maybe mounting low illumination leds to shine down and light up the front of the gauges a little bit. i think it's worth thinking about and seeing if i'll do it later.

also, you were the one that did the full 3.5 and AT swap correct? i may be asking you questions down the road, i'd like to do a 3.5 swap at some point w/ the ecu. are u planning on doing a writeup anytime?

 

what you did looks cool, but without lighting up the rest it looks unfinished. i can dig what you are saying about the el-glo but you should go back to stock or something.

 

Sweet when I tried my needles some werent bright, but yours looks even. Ima do this next time I go home

 

i think this look goes well with my interior. i have an all black leather interior w/ white led accents in the window switches, map and dome lights, courtesy lights. so i think this setup blends well with the rest of the interior and the guages don't stick out too much, but are more subtle, which i like. and i think this is a fairly unique setup, w/ the dark faces at night i think the needles are a little more accentuated and the gauges themselves don't look like there is a lot going on, but simple.

i could consider going back to stock, but it was easier to clip the indiglo wires than to try to remove the indiglo faces themselves.

 

If you do a full swap, that would include swapping your gauge cluster also, as the ECU for the 3.5 works best with the A33B cluster.

Yep, I did do a sort of mini write up, BUT Sony Imagestation closed this year and all my linked pics are down AND this board has had some probs with searching too.

I still have all my pics and data regarding the swap.

 

I actually did get it in there. Its not super bright and it doesnt interfere with the tripometer or odometer. It wasnt easy though.

 

oh really? was it a 3mm led? i don't see how a 5mm could fit in there. honestly when i took everything apart, if i thought i could fit an led well next to the needle on the speedo, i would have done this for all 4 gauges.

but i did not think i could fit one in and still aim it well enough though, so for consistency sake i just taped all leds in the periphery. maybe i'll give it a try when this setup gets old to me.

 

I like them .

 

Yes, Im sorry, It was a 3.

 

do you have pics of your gauges? i'm curious to see how they look.