post pics and let's see how it looks

 

kind of dim to be honest but i'm going to get brighter led's (the dimmer works fine so if its too bright i can always turn it down).

i'll try to snap some pictures soon.

 

Lets see some pics. I have tried out some blue Smt leds from V leds, they were ok but not the blue I was looking and I got bored of the look. Payed almost 50 bucks for those suckers now I dont even want them. Im looking for some Led bulbs that make a nice white... any suggestions for 74's?

 

$50? You're kidding right?

There's only 4 bulbs in the back (7 if you include signals and high beam). And the 5mm NeoWedge bulbs only cost $1.30/each or $2.30/each for high power here.

Also, the blue filter is going to make it hard to get the gauges looking white. I installed white led's and my gauges have a blue tint. Not really the look I'm looking for but whatever, I'm not going to obsess over it, beats the hell out of the dim lighting I had.

I just going to install the high power white led's and call it a day as far as the gauge lighting goes, I'm sick of taking the gauges out and putting back them back in.

I'll snap pictures when i get the chance (i'm kind of busy now).

 

Yup no kidding they were about 11 bucks each.

As for the blue tint.. I'm planning on removing it like others have done. I've done lots of leds in the past and I'm also tired of taking the gauges in and out. So I'm just going to remove the blue tint and throw some bright white bulbs in so its plug and play. I just finished modding the 01 cluster in my 97 and that took a ton of time to do figuring out the diagram.

I'll be more than happy with plug and play. I also like the look of the 194 conversion but that involves soldering unless the holes for the 74 bulbs to be dremeled out to fit the 194 bulb holders. Now that would save a ton of time. Has anyone tried that?

 

Oh man, this s**t is starting to give me a headache. The thing with these aftermarket NeoWedge bulbs is that the angle between the notch and the electrode is different from the OEM NeoWedge plastic thing.





So getting the aftermarket Neowedge electrodes to line up with the electrodes on the circuit board is tricky.

Long story short, I went out to take a picture of my gauge and half of it is not lite anymore. So I got to take out the gauges again and trouble shoot it..... if the high power LED's give me problems like this, I'm just going to see if I can buy some OEM Neowedge bulbs from Nissan and call it a day.

 

To knight,
-no, I saw that the needles were orange all the way through, so unfortunately I couldn't clear them. Oh well... still looks good.

To everyone else,
-if you'd actually read the thread, you'd know that I started out changing my stock bulbs to 194... this is white because the blue filter makes the incandescent bulbs have whiter light (that's the point of the filter). Also, if you plan on getting rid of the blue filter, just know that it is impossible on the 5.5 gen SE or SE TE. I don't know about all other years/models. I know some have clearable blue filters. Anyway, I then noticed the 194s got too hot and started melting things, even though they weren't touching the plastic. So I decided not to risk melting/fire and did a full LED conversion. The reason I did the FULL conversion and didn't just buy plug-n-plays like so many others is because most of the time that looks like crap. I tried it like a year ago. There are hot spots and it was way too dim. The full conversion was a lot of work, but the results were worth it. See!!! (even better in person)

 

oh i read the thread alright (i already knew you used incandescents).

maybe my question might have been a little too deep for you, i just don't understand the physics behind how the blue filter makes incandescents look white but led's look blue.

does anybody know why? thats kind of weird imo. of course it probably has to do something with differences in wavelength of light emitted b/t led's and incandescents.

i just thought white light pretty much contained the whole spectrum so a blue filter should have the same effect on led's and non-led's but obviously i'm mistaken. perhaps someone can enlighten me?

 

so you took it all apart, and then put the bulbs in, put it all back together for nothing? All that work huh? at least mine is bright and looks the way I want it.

 

dude, no need to get all egotistical. sorry if my criticism hurt your ego.

so what if my mod didn't turn out as expected? it happens. it happens, you accept responsibility and move on. that's it, no big deal. no need to get all distraught over it.

i just thought your idea for putting leds in the gauges was overly complex. and i still do. again, sorry if that criticism hurt your ego. i've just seen other approaches on maxima.org which were much simpler, a matter of replacing bulbs rather than soldering up the circuit board.

 

JOWO, I have used hyper white incandesants from polarg and also used white leds on my 4th gen and got the same effects of the light output appearing bluish. I have the 5th gen 2001 cluster AE gauges and these are the same gauges that MetalMax removed the blue film on, so I know it can be done.

I did the conversion to 01 cluster because Im my opinion the 01 cluster lighting is superior to the 97 cluster and it also has the AT indicator display I wanted in the cluster. Plug and play might not get you the perfect results but Its a huge improvement over the stock 74 and its easy to do rather than soldering leds in and spending 20 plus hrs doing it. I cant deny that it looks great after your done and by far superior than any incandesant bulbs can ever accomplish but from my experience its to time consuming for me to do this. If 194's start to melt things I'll go a different route from there but for now that's the look im going for. Again Im using the 5th gen 2001 AE so I know the blue film CAN be removed I think its 5.5 gen and above that has the film that is unremoveable.

 

You didn't hurt my ego DUDE. You said I went through a lot of work to make my gauge look good. YOU went through a lot of work and then you admitted it didn't even work? Who's the moron?

The explanation sounds harder than it is. I could have made it simple and said, buy 4 leds and 4 resisters @ blah blah ohms and blah blah watts and solder it all in. Then someone would buy a different led but the same resister and wonder why his led's fried. So I thought I would explain a little into how you figure out which resistor you need for your particular led. It takes 20 minutes to make this circuit. And I only had to do it once. Now you have to take your dash apart again and try new leds. And guess what, they are not going to work either. The thick blue filter does not allow much light to get through. There are no #74 leds out there that will make your dash brighter. You need at least 1/2 watt leds. 4 tiny led's is not enough to make the cluster brighter.

 

What exactly did you do to your gauges? It took you 20 minutes? To make something like JOWO did takes way longer than 20 min , its a lot of work thats for sure. You are correct you need to calcualte your load for the circuit your making or your leds will eventually fail premature. That was my mistake from the beginging in anycase I was never happy with the output in a 4th gen. Which is why I know have the 2001 cluster. My much more options as far led brightening your cluster.

 

Where are you getting the idea that I added 100 led's to my cluster in 20 minutes? I have 4 x 1/2 watt led's in my cluster right now. xuimod insinuated that I went through a hell of a lot of work to add some led's to my cluster. It took me about 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure if you read the thread from beginning to end you would see what I did to make my cluster brighter.



you can see the size of the led's i used in this picture, the ones behind the LCD are not lit for this pic.

 

niice

 

I was refering to Jowo about 100 plus leds not you. I wasn't sure exactly what you did to your guages that why I asked, but know that you posted some pics that really clears things up. What are the specs of the leds you used? they are super bright for just 4 leds.

 

actually, that picture shows blue led's which I did not end up using. The ones I used are white 8mm straw hat LED's they are 1/2 watt each or about 110,000 mcd. They also spread the light about 140*. They also have white 1 watt available at about 230000 mcd. They both run at about 300mA. A regular led runs about 10000mcd @ 25mA

also you will notice what appears to be a hot spot at 80km and another at about 3k rpm, I did actually put a blue led each there to see how much blue would come through.

 

Hey nice colors. I think I might do mines light blue....... Just a question How did you make your guage up to 260mph? I know its a mod but does your vehicle actually programmed to go up to that? And if so How did you do it?

 

hmm.
wow.
its 260 kmh showstoppa. not a mod. more of a country spec guage. sorry our maxima cant go 260 with a veyron motor stuffed "in the back".

 

Because "white" incandescent bulbs are actually pretty yellow, and the blue filter takes out most of the yellow. The white LEDS are actually white, so you end up with a blue tint.

 

This made my day

 

LOL Sorry bout that I wasn't reading that GUAGE right

 

o am quite scared to do this.

 

what a difference..nice find

 

I need to do this on my '03. I freaking hate how dim it is stock....it's insane.

 

Hate to bump an old thread, better than a new one.... here goes.
How do I brighten up my gauge cluster on a 01 SE? Im NOT looking to do re-wiring, LEDs or need it to be SUPER bright. Just want to have it a little brighter cuz right now its super dim, even with the dimmer turned on all the way.... I found some stock bulbs on courtesy, but i wanted to know if there are brighter ones that will fit right into the OEM slots....

 

You CAN wire 194's in place, but it requires a little handiwork with a dremel and some soldering... They're bigger and brighter. Only problem is that they're hotter too. I tried this before I did my 109 LED conversion and they actually started to melt the face! So be careful. Usually with incandescent bulbs, brighter means hotter or more bulbs.

 

I remember facing this issue on my 5th gen and I ended up leaving the gauge as-is. You could get a bigger bulb and risk melting or you could get LED's and risk hotspots. Sure they have much better LED's to reduce hotspot issues now but sometimes fitment was an issue. If you have the patience and the know how to do this mod, go for it and take your time, i'm sure it will come out good. I would recommend practicing on a used cluster before completely retrofitting your own. Always be prepared if this is your daily driver.

 

yeah, i guess im going to just stick with the stock bulbs. i just hope the ones I have right now are burnt so when I replace them, itll make a good difference....

 

Hey I have a question. I've been looking to do this mod on my 02 SE, and found out that basically I can't remove the blue tint so I'll get a blue tint if I put LED's. What I was aiming for was to get a nice white glow, which from doing some reading, can be obtained from normal incandescent bulbs due to the yellowish glow. Now, I also found out that "Warm" white LED's also have this yellowish glow. If I were to use say a 194 wedge warm white LED, would I be able to use that instead and get a nice glow? If noone knows, can you check this listing and see if this LED would work? The measurements on it show 11mm and 31mm, and I think we're supposed to use 5mm? I have no idea how this works cause I'm pretty new at DIY stuff, but if someone could help me out, that'd be great.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...d=200472381060

 

[QUOTE=OnOiShNo0dl3Z;7565178]Hey I have a question. I've been looking to do this mod on my 02 SE, and found out that basically I can't remove the blue tint so I'll get a blue tint if I put LED's. What I was aiming for was to get a nice white glow, which from doing some reading, can be obtained from normal incandescent bulbs due to the yellowish glow. Now, I also found out that "Warm" white LED's also have this yellowish glow. If I were to use say a 194 wedge warm white LED, would I be able to use that instead and get a nice glow? If noone knows, can you check this listing and see if this LED would work? The measurements on it show 11mm and 31mm, and I think we're supposed to use 5mm? I have no idea how this works cause I'm pretty new at DIY stuff, but if someone could help me out, that'd be great.

It doesn't appear that it would work unless it is soldered into the cluster board as Jowo said. You would have to use 74 wedge bulbs for it to be plug and play.

 

[QUOTE=maxprivate;7566428]Yep. And if you go the wedge bulb route, don't even think about not getting high power LEDs. It'll be way too dim. Trust me, I've been there. Get at least 1/2 watt LEDs like knight did. That's what I'd do if I did it again. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my 109 LED conversion. It just was soooooo much hassle and took forever! Do high power plug n play LEDs.

 

[quote=jowo9;7566489]Thanks for the reply. I only play on either soldering or plugging in I think the four ones for the gauges? So the route I was thinking of probably wouldnt work eh? How much is the 1/2 watt LEDs consumption compared to the stock bulbs? Even if its a higher power consumption, it shouldn't dissipate too much heat since its an LED right? I just want it to be safe and not burn anything while being bright. So there's no way to compensate for the blue tint by using a "Warm" white bulb? Cause I'd much rather have it glow white than blue. It's not going to overwhelm the circuit if I use high power LEDs right? And where can I find them?

I wasn't sure what size I should be getting and what would fit, what would work etc. I was only looking at 194 LEDs that were Warm White with 5 mm (I'm guessing this 5mm is the diameter of the bulb?) What does the 194 stand for ? I looked for it on google but couldn't find out.

Thanks alot again, great help!

 

^^^ if I were to do it again I'd get 1/2 watt (or more powerful) 194's. I'd actually probably do at least 1 watt if I were to do it. That is just the type/size of bulb. They are larger than the stock bulbs so you may need to dremel out the holes slightly and solder the leads on your 194 LED plug n play high power bulb to the metal on the edges of the hole. It's actually a really easy job. The 194s are bigger, so they should light things up better. And you should be fine as far as heat/current goes the warm white might actually work, I never thought of that! You could definitely try it. The LEDs need to have their leads soldered in the right way (if they don't work, just reverse them and they will). If you order them on ebay from hong kong, they're cheaper and will work, but take forever to ship and are lower quality. V-leds.com offers some awesome options and they're super good quality, but more expensive. And they're out of the US I believe. Whichever you decide will work though, as long as they're high power.
Post pics on this thread when you have them in! I would love to see it.

 

Yeah I'll definitely post pics up when I get a chance to do it. Still in classes right now though so might have to put it off a few weeks. I know it's not a big job, but I still need to figure out what's gonna work out. There aren't any stores I can just go to to buy them? I just checked out V-leds.com and they don't seem to have the right ones if I'm looking for warm white. If anyone can tell how much power the stock bulbs have as a comparison then that'd be great.

 

Tagged for future reference.

 

Damn the gauge's all look way better than the stock way to dim but those looks sic with the new bulbs!!

 

Im also not sure if they make a warm light LED. You maybe stuck with the bluish hue to your gauge cluster being that you can not remove the blue filter. The bluish hue looks pretty good IMO, go with some high powered LEDS from Vleds (They will be expensive though) and hopefully you will like the final results. Unless they are plug and play you will have to solder them to the board.

Now that Im out of school I can finally get back to this project, Im going to see if they make high powered 74 LEDS so its plug and play. If not, then I'll go with high powered LEDS like Knight did and solder them to the board with the appropriate resister. Hopefully they won't get to hot and cause things to melt. It will be some experimenting as it always is.

 

Nice, looking forward to your results. I don't expect the LED's to really get hot anyway cause I don't believe they generate much heat right? How much power are you talking about here, 1W each? Would that cause any problems?

 

excellent idea, thats what I need to look for, some high powered 74 LEDs that are plug and play....