I need to light up my needles since I can't see them.


Anyone done this with leaving the orange on the needle?
I haven't been to electronics class in years so if someone can tell me what LED's and what resistors I need, the rest I can do. I would like to leave the lights blue and the needles orange so maybe just clear/white bulbs? Or should I go with red bulbs?

 

How come you can't see the needles?

 

I guess he means at a quick glance while driving, theyre harder to make out than a louder color like orange or red.

 

sand the red otta the needles.

 

I have no idea why I can't see the needle. It's weird. I want to keep the orange.
I may go to radio shack tomorrow and tackle this.

 

Oh **** you werent kidding with that one. First pic doesnt do it justice....

 

you cant see the needles cus they're orange, and your trying to light them up with a blue light.

 

Plus those LED bulbs are creating serious hot spots.

Either sand the orange or get some better bulbe.

 

What bulbs don't create hot spots?
And I think I'll add some white led's to the needles, as I like the orange.

 

Didn't I show you which ones I used? Some styled like these:
http://cgi.ebay.com/2X-BLUE-T10-WEDG...item27b8031a0b

 

Yep, I must have forgotten. Damn $8 for 2 bulbs. Ugh!

Anyone know how to figure out what resistor I need?

 

You can find em for cheaper, that was just the first link I grabbed.

Now for the resistor there's a math equation but I can't think of it off the top of my head. If you get LEDs off eBay you can usually get em with the proper resistors.

 

I'll get these stupid things
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/5x-19...#ht_3248wt_939

I think 620ohm or 670ohm will work. I forgot all this stuff with voltage drops and such.

 

hmm orange sounds like a decent color as well. never seen this done.

 

check out importintelligence.com.........they sell a needle kit but its expensive

 

I'm all about inexpensive.

 

I heard that!

 

Im not the best at soldering so I had to buy those. I can draw you something up though on the way they look

Edit you will need 2 small and 2 large rings. As mentioned here
http://www.importintelligence.com/2laand2smnek.html

The way these work is they are rings with leds on them. Each ring sets underneath the gauge face, directly behind the need.
The large rings had 6 or 8 led's. While the small rings had 4 led's IIRC. They looked pretty much like this



A pic of my needles. They arent that hot. The pic was taken with my old crackberry

 

I want to do that, but I don't want to take off the needles to put the ring around it. Unless I cut a slit in there and slide it in, maybe.
Got actual pics of yours? What size led's? What resistors?

 

I have no idea on size or anything and I didnt take pics of the install

I do remember the LEDs were fairly small.

 

Exactly, this is what everyone did back in the day.
Or use the SE gauges.

 

I like the orange, I'm going to try and keep them.
Anyone know how to calculate the resistor? Say 1 led uses 20ma, do you just say 100ma for 5 leds?

 

I know you can do that with the 95-97 needles, but I thought someone told me on here WAY BACK that the needles were red all the way through on 98-99. Wish I would had known that back then

 

You may be right, Ive never owned a 98-99 gauge cluster so I cant say for sure.

 

If you were to put a dab of black paint on the tip of the bulb, do you think that would eliminate the hot spots?

 

I'll just get different bulbs, that is no big deal.

 

That might work but you might as well get different bulbs like the OP is going to do.

 

ive seen this write up... hope it helps.. http://www.petah.org/maxima/gauge.htm

 

gotta love maximas

 

RANDOM NOOBIE POST

 

I didn't wanna say anything lol He's just tryna get his 15 posts.

 

 

So I bought some red leds from radio shack and some resistors. Tested it out with a 12v power source. I used 2 red leds and a 330ohm resistor and they light up no problem.
One thing I did think of since the LED has anode and cathode, when you solder the wires to the back of the cluster, which side is positive and which is negative?

 

what i did was to open the whole cluster, and then adapt a pair of 3mm led in each gauge, since i use red led, the voltage is around 2.5V and .15 mAH, and were connected in paralell, so the resistence I used was of 80 OHM

go to my page to check out my car, i've been doing a lot of LED mods on it

ledxury.blogspot.com

 

nice!
any write-up on the needle led mod?

 

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

FWIW, here is how you calculate the necessary resistor to allow a certain current to flow using a fixed voltage:

R = V / I

R is the value of the resistor in ohms, V is the supply voltage in volts, and I is the current in amps.

So if you have an LED that needs 20 mA nominal, and you are running off a car's electrical system at 14 volts (NOT 12!!!) then the equation would go as follows:

700 ohms = 14 volts / 0.020 amps

(Note the value of current must be in amps to get ohms out of the equation)

This is called Ohm's Law. Of course resistors don't come in every imaginable value, so you have to pick a standard value that is closest, like 680 ohms.

Keep in mind that each LED has a forward voltage drop and if you put them in series, you must not let the forward voltage drop exceed the supply voltage, or your LEDs will be dim. Consider an LED with Vf (forward voltage) of 2V. Seven LEDs in series would be a total voltage drop of 14 volts, so in this case you would not need any resistors for a supply voltage of 14 volts.

 

Thanks. My brain must have not been working I forgot about ohms law. I am very rusty with electronics, it's been YEARS since I had an electronics course at Devry and I hated it. Who would of though I would of needed it at some point lol
Anyway a local dsm member gave me a few links to help out with this and it makes it much easier.

 

That's very handy. That should be a sticky. Maybe the "How-To : Electronics" section.