Dash Light Bulbs.

[Gav240z]

Hi guys, been meaning to change the bulbs in the guages for quite some time but put it off knowing it was a fairly intensive job as well as fidly.

Anyway I got the bulbs out no problems however I noticed there quite tinted. Now the Dash is dark enough as it is, I'm wondering is there a reason they'd put dull bulbs in there or would it be ok if not better to have normal clear bulbs?

I ask becuase tomorrow I'll be buying the new ones and wanna know if it makes a difference.

1 advantage of the 260z is that this is easier to do .

Anyway this might indefinately put me off white guage faces.

Also while I'm on the topic does anyone know where to get the stickers that say Heat, Temp Etc. on the heater controls?? mine are pealing off. :mad: .

Thanks guys.

[EScanlon]

In my experience, the bulbs tend to "darken" with age.

New bulbs will do a definite improvement in the brightness of your instruments. If you had the instruments out, I would recommend that you open them up and repaint the interiors of them with a bright white paint and check out the huge difference that makes.

The INSIDE of the gauges have little green lens covers where the bulbs insert into the gauge. Be careful of painting the lens.

You can also check to find higher wattage bulbs, I believe the old ones were 3.2w and you can get 4w from h4lights (not sure of his e-mail address), or you might find them locally.

Probably the BIGGEST thing to make sure of, is that the BULB itself is not too big in diameter, or it won't fit inside the housings. I use a Sylvania 53.

Hope this helps.

[Gav240z]

Yeah there 12V 3W globes alright. The tint at first I thought was there for a reason then i thought it was because they were blown but it was almost as if it looked like chrome till I shon a light on them and noticed it's a very dark tint.

I'll try 4W globes I'm going past an automotive supplier so they should have what I'm after.

I have opened these things before, so do you mean painting the metal inside the guage itselft. The actual silver or aluminium looking bit?

I've been tempted to make the guages white. A friend of mine has done this and put blue bulbs in there. Looks great at night but I still am not sure on the whole idea of making them white looks a bit "boy racer" like. I did think of getting a second set of guages to do this but not sure how much it would set me back.

Hmmm decisions decisions.

Thanks for the insight anyway.

[EScanlon]

As far as painting the gauges, yes, I mean the "CAN" that they're in.

If you'll look closely, sometimes you'll have a gauge with some pale greenish white paint that's starting to peel off. That's what I repainted with the brightest white paint I could find and I'm real pleased with the results.

As far as putting colored bulbs, don't forget that there's a green lens that covers the bulb and tints the light.

As far as making white face gauges, there's been a couple posts where people have scanned in the stock gauges and then used some picture editor programs to change the background color.

You can also buy vinyl inserts.

FWIW

[aRCH-Z]

hey man,

i've put in ultra white light bulbs in all my gauges and painted the needles orangy red with luminous paint.. looks ace if i may say so myself :-D

ol MY-260 had red gauge lights as well.. that looked nice especially with the sony xplod head unit

hehe

but dont ever use those little colored condom things for the bulbs.. they expand with the heat (even when using the correct type for the wattage of bulb) and get paler and paler as time goes.. till it looks more pink then red

if you want colored bulbs, fork out the money and get proper colored ones.. autobarn can order em for ya

[Zed]

An really nice alternative might be Speedhut's EL-Glow gauges.

The "Font Glow" (reverse EL-Glow) would be real nice.

http://www.speedhut.com/

They only need 12 more orders to tooling-up.