Changed my dash lights to LED! 67 Coronet 500.

[TekHousE]

Well I purchased a kit with multi color LED's in it.


Pulled my dash, and replaced all the gauge lights with WHITE, the turn signals with GREEN and the Oil and High Beam with RED.


Dash stills dims like before, turn signals etc. look really clear and bright. (I also put in a tach at the blank 'clock' position, but it is not yet wired up and does not have a hole in the back housing for a light anyway)


Video shot on my daughters phone, so not great quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gUm9uxIcJo&list=UUL407jhJUQfsDZ9oANqQlCQ

[ws27]

Looks great Tek

[TekHousE]

Tx..

[thebankerstoy]

I agree Tek, they do look great! I'm going to switch all of my '66 Coronet 500's interior lighting over to LED lighting as well.

Automotive retro fit LED lighting has come a long way in the past few years indeed. The main problems with LED lighting for our older cars included having them provide a warm white color that would also be able to provide lighting for the entire instrument cluster, or gauge without glare, shadows, or unlit black spots. The older technology that our cars headlight switches and electrical systems use also posed an issue for being able to dim and brighten the LED bulbs and they also had to design an LED bulb that would fit into the instrument cluster assemblies without having to make modifications.

Another fantastic benefit of using LED lighting in your cars interior, is that the LED bulbs don't produce much, if any heat, so that will save all of the interiors plastic lenses from turning yellow and brittle from being heated up by the older style bulbs. So this new technology will save all of the plastic lenses used on your cars floor console lamp lights, C-pillar courtesy lamps, dome lights, map lights, instrument clusters and other locations. Time will tell for these new retro fit automotive LED light bulbs, but LED bulbs that are used in home lighting applications last YEARS longer than the old style bulbs, so hopefully this will be the case for these automotive LED bulbs as well.

I won't hi-jack your thread here Tek, but one of these days I'll start another thread showing how one of my friends and me designed, built and installed a custom LED lighting system for the dash cluster in my sons 1972 Dart Swinger a few years ago before all of the new automotive LED bulbs like you purchased became available. The bulbs that we used are custom made and aren't as nice as the ones that you bought, but they are MUCH better than the extremely lousy originals that Chrysler designed back in the day for this car.

Richard

[ws27]

Richard, I'd love to see that.

[TekHousE]

I don't consider this a hi-jack mate. I too would love to know more. I think the LED's now available (ones that have an arrangement of LED's do recreate an 'all-round' light) are excellent. The ones I used in my dash were like this. And light the colored plastic lenses nicely and fairly evenly.

[thebankerstoy]

Ok Tek, with your approval, I'll talk a little about the LED instrument cluster lighting system that my friend and me designed, built and installed a few years ago for my sons 1972 Dart Swinger.

This project all started after I had mentioned to my friend Jacques that the original factory designed instrument cluster lighting in the Dart really wasn't very good and that I had been wondering if a more modern lighting option such as LED's might be an alternative option. He is one of those folks that is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to computer hardware, computer software, writing computer programs, computer operating systems and anything else regarding those types of things.

After looking through all of his sources for aftermarket LED bulbs and not finding anything that was directly suitable for older automotive use, he asked me if I might have a spare instrument cluster for the Dart that he could take apart and study. Well, of course I did, so I gave it to him and the project began.

While the system that he came up with will seem a lot more complicated that what you used Tek, at that point in time we did not have any of those choices available to use, so he ended up designing this system from scratch using parts that he knew well from working on and building custom computers for folks including me. While I am not able to tell you the exact parts that he used, I can say that he purchased a couple of blank circuit boards which he programmed after writing a custom program for this project that would allow the modern LED bulbs to be turned on and off and be fully dimmed and brightened with the Dart's factory original headlamp switch. I will also mention that both he and me have a somewhat warped sense of humour, so we both loved the idea of using a metal Altoids box as the heat sink for the control box!

I'll let the following pictures tell the rest of the story, but I will say that not only has this system been extremely reliable since being installed, but it solved the poor lighting issue beautifully indeed!

Richard

These pictures show the brains of this system, the control box which allows the Dart's original headlamp switch to operate the LED bulbs.





The red dots in this picture shows where the original factory bulbs were located. To add to the problem of having too few bulbs in place to properly illuminate the various gauges, the factory bulbs were also placed behind the metal gauge surround plates further reducing their ability to properly illuminate the gauges. To say that this was a truly lousy design is being nice indeed!




These pictures show where all of the LED bulbs were placed inside of the Dart's instrument cluster. (bulbs are circled in red)





This picture shows the back side of the instrument cluster with the LED bulb wiring in place. Black tape was removed before the cluster was installed.



These pictures show the instrument cluster back in place and the LED bulbs set on full brightness setting. Most all of the glare that you see in these pictures are due directly to my lack of camera skills. I don't have any pictures of the Dart's instrument cluster with the original old style bulbs in place, but please trust me when I tell you that there is absolutely NO comparison between the two bulb styles and the amount of illumination that each provides!

[4404spd]

Good idea ... LED lights are cool... What I did,I swapped every individual bulb in my dash from the clear ones to the red couloured ones on my 65 Convertible.

Looks great at night ...

[TekHousE]

I found a small issue..Well not really a problem but something I noticed.

When my light switch is dialed up to the brightest setting, I get some intermittent flicker in the LED's. If I cut the dial back to HALF it goes away. Note, even at half the LED's are not visibly DIMMER, they only start to dim after the knob has turned half way or less towards the dimmest/off setting. I think that the LED's are getting too much current from the switch when at FULL, so are flickering to try and make sense out of all the power..They do not NEED that power, so they freak out..

There is no increase in brightness from half way to FULL anyway. So now my lights are all stable.

@Richard, one of the better uses for an Altoid tin mate! Handy little suckers they are.

If I was to do this again..I might look at SIDE EMITTING OPTIC FIBER using an LED as the light source. Then jsut like in Richards photos, I would basically do the same, only run the optic fiber around the edges of each instrument.

[ws27]

If you look at the fine print on the LEDs, they most likely say they have a voltage rating range. Like 3-12v DC. (for example) So they are designed to go to full bright at the lower end of the range which is apparently about half way on the head light switch. Why they are freaking out, I'm not sure, but it may have something to do with the diodes in the alternator.

Anyway that's my theory and I'm sticking with it. LOL