Sold on LEDs

[TomoHawk]

BTW-  my heater control panel uses a bayonet socket too.  The socket fits into a hole in the back of the lever panel.  Right now, the socket is loose from switching bulbs so much-  It stretched  apart at the bayonet slots and I will need to squeeze it back into shape.

This is a chinese wedge LED:

Edited March 25, 2016 by TomoHawk

[Mike]

Not sure if you've tried looking or not.. but, the marine world has gone to LED's as well.  These might be better quality.

https://doctorled.com/

[TomoHawk]

Thanks, but I don't think those "LEDs" would work for the S30 gauges, because they are large groups of very high power LEDs put together in a glass tube (like a festoon bulb)  to be used in navigation lamps.

 

[TomoHawk]

Anyway, I took out the clock, because it out to be the easiest gauge to work with , with only the one bulb, and I installed both the tower style (with 10 chips) and the 'wedge' style (with 8 chips.)  I powered the bulb using my 12V AA cell pack.  Overall, there wasn't much difference in how well the face of the clock was illuminated, so I'm going to conclude that having the two LED chips on the end of the tower didn't have any affect in the illumination of the clock face
.  Granted, the gap for the light to get to the clock face was small, but the design of the clock  had the light reflecting to  the clock face.  I think the other gauges are of a different design.

Tower bulb with 10 chips:                 'wedge' bulb with 8 chips

                                                                  

Edited March 26, 2016 by TomoHawk

[dmorales-bello]

I did the LED swap in all the dash instruments and AC controls using 10 chip tower bulb types. I used a flat CREE panel for the glove box. I did have to remove all the green plastic domes in the instruments to allow the bulbs to fit. The resulting illumination is evenly spread over the instrument faces but the clock is not quite as bright as the others (gauge design?). I used white bulbs and the color of the light ended up having a slight bluish tint which I actually like during night driving. My dimmer knob works but the difference between minimum and maximum brightness is not as noticeable as with the incandescent bulbs. 

BTW, you will notice light from under the dash onto the floors. I used two white LED strips attached under the dash and connected to the instrument lighting lead to achieve the subtle so called "ambient lighting".

 

Edited April 3, 2016 by dmoralesbello

[Captain Obvious]

I've spent a bunch of time working on the LED conversion, and here's some of what I've learned so far. For the discussion, I'm going to call the style you posted at the top of the page "paddlewheels" because I think that's what they look like.

I've found that the paddlewheels have very good light dispersion inside the gauges. The only problem I have with them is that I think they are too bright. Other people can't seem to get enough brightness, but I guess I like my dash lights dim.

I've found that the five emitter tower styles are not as bright as the paddlewheels, but are still too bright (meaning that I don't think you would need to resort to ten emitter towers). But I also found that the tower styles created a "hot-spot" where the forward facing emitter shines it's light. My solution was to modify my five emitter towers into four emitter towers by razor knifing the top emitter off of the assembly. Now my towers broadcast to the sides only and do not broadcast directly towards the gauge faces. I think the light diffusion and dispersion is much better. In fact, once I cut off the top emitter, I find that the towers and the paddlewheels both seem to have about the same quality of light dispersion.

My final hurdle at this point is dealing with the brightness. I've actually spend considerable time trying to come up with an alternative that is less bright and what I think I have decided to do is use my four emitter towers in the gauges and to insert a current limiting resistor inside the BA9S base to reduce the brightness. I've got a bunch of bulbs done and am almost done. It's a pain, but I should only have to do it once. Ever.

And yes, I also disassembled all the gauges and popped out the green lenses. Don't forget about the HVAC assy. And I warn you... It's not a easy as the gauges because they glued stuff together.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Captain Obvious

[TomoHawk]

I agree with you on all the points.    I tried both bulb styles, but I used the paddlewheels in everything so far.

I couldn't think of any place you would really want to hot-spot from the tower bulbs, except for things like the turn signal or high beam indicators, but I also didn't think you could cut off the end emitters. You can get LED bulbs with only the face or end emitters, if you need them.  What if you glued the green cap (or part of it) over the end?  I used a green '"Sharpie"  marker to color the 7V bulbs that are in there now- could a bit of colored marker dim the light to taste?

Otherwise, I think if the gauges will be slightly 'too bright' than I won't mind, as I am the only person to notice, and they don't check the illumination of the gauges at car shows,

It will be interesting to see how you can put a resistor in the base.

[TomoHawk]

d-

Your interior looks great- like new even.  I loose tons of points just because my interior looks "old" even after restoring & painting it ...

I hope the 'mood lighting' goes off when you close the door.  It would really bother me to have the interior or floor light up while driving-  It would be a cool touch for  auto shows, but I would rather keep my attention on the road.

[Captain Obvious]

Yup, you can cut that top emitter off with no problem. Take a look at my crude hand drawn schematic and you'll see that the five emitters are actually in five parallel paths with current limiting resistors for each path. Taking the top emitter off just removes one of those parallel paths.

 

Here's what I did for cutting down the brightness. Start with this:

 

Desolder the center (positive) connection and the base comes off. If the glue bond hasn't already been broken, you will have to break it. But pull/twist, and the base comes off:

 

Unbend the negative lead and pull off the white plastic ring. Same thing goes for the glue here. It's supposed to be glued on, but the quality of the bond is usually pretty poor and it comes off easily:

 

I shortened the length of the positive lead and attached a resistor. The resistor in the pic is 270 Ohms, but I have since changed to a 240 Ohms to make it just a little brighter. I like my dash dim, so the fine tuning of the value is left to the individual:

 

Slip the plastic ring and the base back on, feeding the resistor lead out the hole in the bottom. Solder up that center connection, clip off the excess, and you're done. Here's what it looks like before you solder the resistor lead:


When you're done done, it looks like it did before you started. I didn't glue any of them together yet until I'm positive I like the resistor value I picked, but it's a simple matter to unsolder and resolder that center connection. I'm going to get the whole project done and then glue them up.

 

About the green lens? I wanted white, so I just removed the lenses and tossed them in a baggie. If you wanted green, I think you can get the tower versions in green, can't you? Is that "too much" green maybe?

Edited March 27, 2016 by Captain Obvious
Boy do I wish there was a "preview" button...

[Captain Obvious]

dmoralesbello, Your white install looks great. Too bright for my tastes, but that's up to the individual. As I mentioned above, I'm using the five emitter towers and I find even them to be too bright. But to each his own.

 

About the dimmer control. You'll never get good brightness control of LED's with the stock dimmer rheostat. Just a nature of the electronics involved. If you want good brightness range, you'll have to swap to a much higher rheostat value, or you'll have to change over to a pulse width technology dimmer module. I think pretty much every car made today uses PWM technology instead of rheostats and there was a bunch of discussion about such things in a thread a little while ago:

[dmorales-bello]

The setting for my cell phone pics was set to enhance the light and "show off" the instrument LED lights. The dimmer is also set to max illumination for the pics. In reality the instrument lights are not visible to the naked eye if you have them on during day light conditions and certainly not as bright as they seem in the pics at night time, but as was said before, every individual has different preferences regarding the brightness of the instrument panel (and that's one reason for the existence of the dimmer control).

Captain O: great work with the resistor on the bulb! Are you still planning on going with a PWM dimmer on your set-up along with the modified bulbs? And, yes, green LED bulbs are easily available and would help re-create the OEM lighting, IMO.

[TomoHawk]

I have a few dimmers I got from the JY.  Some just pulled out, so you have to dig into the panel to get the wires/connector, and some came out with wires or connector attached.  Some had a knob that pops out for safety, and others didn't.  The challenge is to mount it or add a long shaft so you can swap it for the rheostat, and to connect it to the wiring to control the lights.