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Well it mainly depends on which route you wanna take. If you wanna do what gear did I would recommend just pretty much any led's off ebay. I did mine in a 6th gen just like his, but since the needles are a lot different I broke mine. With using leds you can leave the needle the same color so that isn't a problem. If you don't want to solder I would recommend looking to any led that says 12v on it as it will be prepared for you. I used Flat Top blue leds with a viewing angle to 135 degrees and the lighting is very even. Other then the leds you would need some acetone to clear the back of the gauges and some simple electrical stuff. If that is too much I would simply suggest buying some gauge faces which are fairly easy to put in and still require a little bit of electrical work. The hardest part to gears if taking the needles and faces off but even that is fairly simple. Just remember where ur needles were before hand or you may need to recalibrate them.

 
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12v? wouldnt you still need a resistor? aren't we working with a 14v source?

 
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oh yea an also is acetone the only way to take off the color of the gauges?

 
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yeah, but be careful and use qtips to slowly strip it. you may have to do an area several times and change to clean qtips each time. theres alot of paint. dont drip the acetone and never get it on the front of the gauges or theyre ruined.

our cars operate anywhere between 12-15v when the car is running. as a safe bet, assume 14.5v and wire the leds to that total voltage. the proper way is to use a voltage regulator that will output a specific voltage, like 12v. then you wire all the leds to 12v and even if the car voltage moves around, the leds will not be affected. to be honest tho, for small led projects i would just use resistors and 14.5v max input. ive never used regulators with any of my small 5mm or superflux leds. the only side effect is you may notice the leds get a bit dimmer when the car voltage drops to 12v sometimes. but its not very easy to see unless you watch for it.

 
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See gear knows everything. But I have never seen leds disgned for cars but since I make them myself I don't look too hard either. I'm not sure how different the back of the faces r from 6th and 7th gen but for mine I picked up some rags and acetone from walmart, it was all in the paint section. I just took the bottle of acetone, dumped it on a rag and wiped around the backs. I had to change rags like 3 times for each gauge and while I rub it the first time to lift the paint, I switched corners for the second and third pass. The backs are completely clear and nothing ever got on the front.

As for the 12v leds, they were designed for use on computers and honestly I wouldn't even both with a volt reg as leds last forever to begin with and the difference in voltage may cut the life in half but thats still about 50k hrs. This project is focused around how much effort/money are u willing to put into it.

 
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most oem cars that have dash leds (new eclipse and some others) use SMT leds which are the small surface mount leds. but its not practical for diy projects.

 
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yo dude where did you buy red leds ? and is that hard to change them ?