Ek3 Cluster Panel

[Strikeee]

Hi all,

I thought of sharing what I have found(not something new) but, I think most Civic EK owners dont know(I might be wrong, but people I talked didnt know about it)

So this all begins with me experiencing that my EK3's clusters were barely visible at night, stock back-lights only light up the numbers of all dials and not having glow needles make it hard to read where the needles are pointing at night, specially, the temp needle.

At 1st I thought of fitting a glow gauges, but it didnt feel right, so thought of upgrading the stock bulbs with LEDs and followed the instructions of this youtube

to remove the cluster panel.

Cluster panel was back-lit using 2 - T10s and 3 - T5s, so all you have to do is replace them with relevant LEDs. (If you are buying LEDs, go for SMD 5050 insted of SMD 3528 which has high intensity of light) and during this process, I found out that, my civic's cluster panel has a front lit system, which allows light coming from front of the cluster panels, and enables to read all clusters. It has 2 T3 bulbs (I marked the place by arrows in the pic in below link)

Pic one

So this is how it looks like at night,(pic is not clear, but, its really clear for naked eye)

Pic two

Pic three

And I learned it in the hard way, because, my T10 LEDs were SMD 5050 while T3s were SMD 3528, thats why you can see there is a difference between the brightness.

So, by changing these 2 bulbs will increase the visibility of you clusters and you dont need to spend like 6k to go for glow gauges.

Cheers

And sorry if this is something which is a well known fact.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Strikeee

[Bracket]

Dunno if it's only me but cant see pics... broken links maybe?

Edited March 6, 2014 by Bracket

[Strikeee]

I edited it again.. :-)

Thanks bro

[maheshw]

add full pic after the replacement