LED Dash Light Question

[NiceLyphe]

Im looking to put LED dash lights in my 240. I want to get the UV violet ones, thing is i dont know which style to get for the s13 dash. Also what style should i get for the service lights such as the gas light, and check engine light. Here is a link to where i wold be purchasing them from. Also does anyone have any pictures of the violet LEDs they have put in their 240?

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/ ... wedge.html

And yes i know which bulbs go where in my car, i just dont know what style of LED to get..For best viewing purposes, especially that with that color.

[breadbox]

I found this Info using the link you posted FYI. Go to car bulbs. then I went into the instrument bulbs, at the bottom of the page is a button "Identify Bulbs in your Vehicle." But 1989 should be the same as 92'.

1989 NISSAN 240SX

High & low beam headlamp
H6054
H6054ST Silverstar: The brighter and whiter light. Up to 35% brighter, up to 30% more downroad visibility and up to 35% more sideroad visibility.
H6054XV XtraVision: The brighter light for upgraded performance. Up to 30% brighter light and up to 25% more downroad visibility.
H6054CB Cool Blue: The whiter light for style. Up to 25% brighter light and up to 25% more downroad visibility.
H6054LL Long Life Halogen Upgrade: Lasts 6x longer

Parking light
1157
1157LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Front turn signal
1156
1156ST SilverStar: The brighter, whiter signal light. Up to 30% brighter light, up to 20% whiter light and up to 10% farther and wider.
1156LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.
1157
1157LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Rear turn signal
1156
1156ST SilverStar: The brighter, whiter signal light. Up to 30% brighter light, up to 20% whiter light and up to 10% farther and wider.
1156LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Tail light
1157
1157LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Stop light
1157
1157LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

High mount stop light
1156
1156ST SilverStar: The brighter, whiter signal light. Up to 30% brighter light, up to 20% whiter light and up to 10% farther and wider.
1156LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.
921
921ST SilverStar: The brighter, whiter signal light. Up to 30% brighter light, up to 20% whiter light and up to 10% farther and wider.
921LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Fog/Driving light
H3-55W

License plate
89
89LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Back up light
1156
1156ST SilverStar: The brighter, whiter signal light. Up to 30% brighter light, up to 20% whiter light and up to 10% farther and wider.
1156LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Front sidemarker
194
194LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Rear sidemarker
194
194LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Ash tray
158
158LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Glove box
158
158LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Map light
158
158LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Dome light
DE3175
DE3175LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Step/Courtesy light
158
158LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.
DE3022
DE3022LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Trunk/Cargo area
194
194LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety.

Instrument-general
194
194LL SYLVANIA Long Life miniature bulbs perform twice as long as any standard miniature bulb. Designed for durability, lower maintenance and greater safety

[NiceLyphe]

Thank you lol, ive seen that sheet at one point, but i mean like, what style? They got those 5 LED ones, and all that technical stuff..whats the best for viewing in the dash?

[breadbox]

OH, IDK. I'd assume any of them would be bright as hell. Maybe get a few styles of each test them and sell off the ones you don't like.

[whyteboi]

you prolly want to get something with a 360 degree light output, because thats what a bulb would put out, it will just be hella brighter

[motoman399]

inverted cone~no hot spots

[Second Shadow]

the WLED-x5 should do very well, it's a 360 degree pattern while having 1 led still shooting strait up. I actually just ordered a bunch of these, just waiting for them to come in. you could also go with the high power smd ones too.

if you were to open up the cluster you'll see that the way these work is there's clear plastic pieces that have arms that go right over where the bulbs are, and the light from the bulb travels up the arm into the main body of the plastic piece, and thats what lights up your needles. so you need a bulb that shoots strait up and also spreads out to the sides(because the rest of the gauge backlighting doesn't travel up from that plastic piece).



now I don't want to discourage you, but I have a feeling violet bulbs are going to suck at lighting the needles. I actually tried blue led bulbs before and although the gauge backlighting was nice, needles were next to invisable. if that happens you might want to look into the needle kit from import intelligence, I got the red ones(to go over blue backlit gauges) and it work really well, too well in fact...almost blinding. however that was with red needles, violet might be a little better.

[elo240]

Second shadow nailed it. I have used these in my car and they work very well. nice even light distribution.




I also added import intelligence needle leds to change their color.

[motoman399]

does anyone have a picture of the import intelligence kit before the install?

[Second Shadow]

when I did the IE needles I also installed some white face gauge faces, the ones from andys autosport that light up. heres some pics:




you have to sand down that plastic piece I was talking about right(just the ones for tach and speedo, the gas and temp gauges have a plastic piece but it's already flush) where the needle sits to make room from the LEDs. they are glued to a sticker that sits right below the needle, so light can get through the sticker and the only thing lighting the needles is the LEDs. this makes using different colors for back lighting and needles very easy, but once again the needles are bright as hell.

[motoman399]

wow that looks a little more difficult to make than i imagined. can i ask how much you spent on the needle light kit? and also where did you wire them into? did they come plug and play? or did you have to solder them in? thanks

[NiceLyphe]

Hmm i see, some good information guys, thanks. Will these work in the cluster?

WLED-x5 LED Wide Angle LED bulb

* 12 VDC 5-LED Wedge Base bulb (194/168 type)
* Super Wide Viewing Angle bulb uses 4 radially mounted LEDs aiming out the sides and one High Flux LED on top
* With built-in voltage regulator
* Non-Polarized bulb

Or

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/4-pcs-19 ... ccessories

[motoman399]

if you get hot spots on the bulbs you install, take a file and flatten the top of the led. it will give it a flood affect.

[NiceLyphe]

3 of these 5 led bulb sets in the cluster? Or 4?

[motoman399]

3 in non hud and i believe 6 in hud

[NiceLyphe]

And any idea what i would use to change those service lights over to leds? And the turn signal arrows int he dash.

[s13sickboi]

wow..... please post finished product!

[Second Shadow]

wow that looks a little more difficult to make than i imagined. can i ask how much you spent on the needle light kit? and also where did you wire them into? did they come plug and play? or did you have to solder them in? thanks

after looking at the website it seems they don't carry violet ones, but based how these are made I bet it wouldn't be a big deal if you asked them. they weren't hard to wire up, it's basically 1 or 3 LEDs in series on a wire, and the for wires(1 per gauge) get spliced into 1 wire with some resistors(for the 1 LED series) so when you hook it up, all you have to do is hookup the power wire to a 12v source thats one when you cluster lights are(I used a wire on the dimmer switch) and then a ground wire. (and no I don't believe the dimmer function worked for them).

finding a good way to hide those little wires can be tricky, since I used the whiteface overlays it wasn't for me though.

http://www.importintelligence.com/2laand2smnek.html

3 of these 5 led bulb sets in the cluster? Or 4?

the cluster actually takes 5 bulbs. there's the three for the gauges, then 2 others on the sides that use 194 style bulbs. some people have problems getting the two on the very ends to light up, I noticed that I had to jiggle the hell out of the bulbs and then they lit.

And any idea what i would use to change those service lights over to leds? And the turn signal arrows int he dash.

first of all, the 2 bulbs on the very end are part of what you're talking about here. the little gas can symbol for instance won't light up very well without the 194 bulb in the extreme edge of the cluster. every other (service/smaller) bulb in there use #74 bulbs, they're on the same page of the superleds website that the 194 bulbs are on.

wow..... please post finished product!

I'm afraid thats the best I can do. I actually had this installed and working, but didn't like it, and didn't take a pic with it lit up. decided to get stock black gauges, white LED backlight, and red needles. if you look at the II website, then look up the white faces(andys autosport) I think you can pretty much get a feel for what they look like lit up though.

it looked really cool, but when trying to use it I noticed that at night it was really really bright and I found it to be problematic. I'm starting to think this is just inherently a problem with white face gauges. white face is white with black or at least dark colored numbers, and at night they have to switch roles. this means that the dark numbers have to be really bright to stand out against the white face, and the gauges becomes hard to read(especially at twilight) with everything blending together. my sense of it is this; in a city with a lot of bright lights all over the place all night(like tokyo) this would work great. however, where I live sometimes your car is the only light spot for miles, and every time you look at the cluster and then back at the road you can't see very well.

[matzinm2]

This is right up my alley,

When I did the green Import Intelligence kit it was super tedious, about two hours of sanding needles, repainting and installing; but definitely worth the 70 bucks. I would NOT suggest trying to make something like that. I was afraid I'd break the copper wires or the led rings the whole time. Anyway, OP, if it helps at all, I have run reverse LEDs in two of my last cars and have been somewhat happy with them, they are a little dim and can lead to hot spots, there are 6 LED's behind the non-HUD dash, that is correct, and finally, if you want total spread and super awesomeness MOAR brightness, spend the extra cash and get SMD's (surface mount LEDs) I'll post some pics of my Altima's revers 197a wedges and the Import Intelligence needle kit right now for ya.


as you can tell I had a dim spot around the 40 MPH mark, but it all depends on bulb location BRO

Hope this helps.

[NiceLyphe]

Hmm thanks for all the information, and examples, every bit helps lol. Would this work for the 5 cluster bulbs? or not because the way the LEDs are mounted?



Or should i just go with these, they look blue though..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2pcs-168 ... ccessories