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Updated with pictures of my progress. Now that I am going in the right direction, I might try blue bulbs or retry the el wire




In this picture, you can see a "hot spot" on the "0" of the "20" that gave me the idea. The hot spot was created by my dumbass accidentally touching the guage face with my solder iron on the back for like a nanosecond but it gave me the idea so no worries


I need some help.. Ive tried just about everything to brighten up my guages. I tried more powerful bulbs that will get really hot and prolly blow my car up, tried EL wire behind the guages and ran into crazy problems...not I want to try LED's. My plan is to fab a backing plate to the guage plate holding several LED's for each guage. The only thing is I have no clue how much resistance I need to add so my 12v wont blow the LED's. I know a typical LED can hold 3v but not sure about amps or whatever...

Im so lost....please help ....and this is not on a civic...im jealous cuz the 04+ came with those sexy guages...

 
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www.lsdiodes.com

 
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you should PM gearbox. He's the led gauge guy of the site.

 
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i've done a few clusters in my day. First was blue led needles and EL backlight. Works fine but you need at least 20 feet to be bright. Then I tried another cluster just clearing off the paint and putting red filter. Looks pure red and 2x brighter than stock using same bulbs. I'm not sure what you want tho.

 
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^^

can that red thing be done with the color blue?

 
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not really. Incandescent bulbs put out most of their usable light in the red/orange/yellow higher wavelength portion of visible light spectrum. Using a blue filter instead of red will result in very little light coming through. Thats why you need a self-emitting light source that only gives off a single wavelength around 460nm like LEDS.

 
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would it be hard to use cold cathodes from a pc fan to add color to the back of the guages. And do you think that a resistor or something would be needed for the wiring.

Like these:

 
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This looks beautiful!! Me likes!
I have 30 ft of white el wire and Ive tried everything to but its not flexible enought to get to stay in such a small space. I even cut the 30 ft into two 15ft sections to make it easier to work with. Ive got a 10-30 ft inverter so the 15 wont burn up. I like the idea of using the el wire and Im in love with the white color but damn trying to get it in 1inch or less little strips and trying to tape it to the guage plate is a bitch!! Lemme give you a diagram of what I want to try next with the el wire before scrapping it completely.


In this diagram, the red lines represent the el wire and the close-up represents the bend in the wire. The thicker red par is the el wire and plastic sheath, the thinner part represents the el wire without the sheath so the bend is easier to hold. Think it'll work?

 
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i'm not sure but I think you got el tape and not the wire. the wire is just like a piece of electrical wire and very easy to wrap. I'm using the 03+ coupe gauges now and if you peek behind there, it actually uses leds behind a fuzzy light diffuser to make everything evenly spread. The cathodes would not fit and even if they did the light would be uneven.

 
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No I got el wire. I know its very flexible but I have limited room to work with which requires me to try to bend the wire almost on itself to cover the guages. Its hard to explain

 
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looks like you need led setup. That wire won't last long when its folded.

 
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Yeah, I tried again with the wire....still not nearly as bright as I want it. Im going to order some matrix 194's from autolumination and try out 5 of those. If that doesnt work....Im going to go get some more led's and fab a plate to hold em.

 
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when you put the leds in, you may want to try and diffuse the light with some tissue paper or something so it doesn't shine more brightly where the bulb is. Thats how the 03 cluster is on the vic.

 
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You can also grind down the LEDs to diffuse better.

 
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I actually decided to try one other thign. I took the guage cluster apart and sanded down the back of the tach. There was a layer of like plastic or paint or whatever that wasnt allowing that much light to pass through the guage face. I used my 1500 grit sand paper to sand down the back until I could see the numbers. Worked like a charm. Heres some comparison shots for the tach (done) and the speedd (not done)



In this picture, you can see a "hot spot" on the "0" of the "20" that gave me the idea. The hot spot was created by my dumbass accidentally touching the guage face with my solder iron on the back for like a nanosecond but it gave me the idea so no worries

 
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cool yea on ours I actually used acetone on a q-tip to dissolve the paint and make it clear from the back.

 
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Thats not a bad Idea. will the acetone eat through the plastic clear shield or the guage plastic?

 
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it does eat the gauge plastic a bit but not enough to damage the other side (unless you spill and it gets on the front). just be careful and try on a test area first.

 
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I got an idea tell me what you think

1. Take the gauge faces and scan them.

2. Then mod them in photoshop. Clearing the section you want. adding images/logos, whatever.

3. Take the images digitally to Kinko or a simular facility and have the images put on a tranparent sheet.

4. Then cut to fit.

5. Then back fill with a color of choice.

comments/idea?

 
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thats really hard to do unless you're a pro in photoshop.

 
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that method has been done before. someone with a 04 or 05 coupe pulled apart his cluster and custom made his own gauge faces

 
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Sounds cool but anything that sounds easy will give me months of migraines

 
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photoshop is cake for me. (I made my avatar blink with adobe image ready and photoshop)
I just don't have a scanner nor do I know anyone with one so I can get a life size pic of the gauges.

 
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can anyone provide scanned images of the gauge faces?

Hopefully 2001 to 2003

 
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i move in a week... my girls does grafix for a living.. ill see what we can do..