Lighting Problem After Insgtalling Leds In The Speedometer

jdnet · November 10, 2010

Thought this problem would apply to other cars too so I thought I'd post this in the general section. Anyway, my problem arose after I took out the old lights on my speedometer and installed LEDs. Everything worked out fine until I realized the guage needles were not getting any light. I believe this is due to the fact that the LED lighting has a smaller angle than the old lihgt bulbs, therefore the clear plastic that channels the light into the needles is unable to collect enough light. I was wondering if anyone have run across this problem and come up with a solution.

Thanks.

harshansenadhir · November 10, 2010

On 11/10/2010 at 2:31 AM, jdnet said:

Thought this problem would apply to other cars too so I thought I'd post this in the general section. Anyway, my problem arose after I took out the old lights on my speedometer and installed LEDs. Everything worked out fine until I realized the guage needles were not getting any light. I believe this is due to the fact that the LED lighting has a smaller angle than the old lihgt bulbs, therefore the clear plastic that channels the light into the needles is unable to collect enough light. I was wondering if anyone have run across this problem and come up with a solution.

Thanks.

That's exactly the issue with LEDs since they're light is pointed, explained the same thing in thisthread.

Did some searching around sometimes back when I thought I'd go for LED's and after much effort gave up the idea. Solution gave up was fixing many LED's to the back panel of the meter cluster as it covers the entire cluster evenly where there's no dark spots and ultra bright spots. BTW what type of LEDs you tried? with on LED on each bulb or many LEDs on the same bulb, say at least 3 fixed to different directions?

jdnet · November 10, 2010

On 11/10/2010 at 3:39 AM, harshansenadhir said:

That's exactly the issue with LEDs since they're light is pointed, explained the same thing in thisthread.

Did some searching around sometimes back when I thought I'd go for LED's and after much effort gave up the idea. Solution gave up was fixing many LED's to the back panel of the meter cluster as it covers the entire cluster evenly where there's no dark spots and ultra bright spots. BTW what type of LEDs you tried? with on LED on each bulb or many LEDs on the same bulb, say at least 3 fixed to different directions?

Harshan,

I'm not sure which type of LEDs these are but from what ik've been told these are the ones used in the allion and such. They are quite costly at 350 a piece and are pretty bright and the lighting is even, without any birght or dark spots. I will post some pictures when I take the speedometer out again today. The only issue they seem to product is with the actual channeling of light into the needles. If I were to put some sort of reflector to channel the light I worry that it may blobk the light out of other areas. I'm thinking my last option would be to solder a 4 leds and point them directly at the plastic that channels the light to the needles of the four gauges. I was hoping I had some other options as I would hate to mess around with a perfectly good instrument cluster.

jdnet · November 10, 2010

ahhh google is my friend. This is that it looks like but the bottom is different and the led chip faces upward.

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/321073157/LED-with-Error-free-IC-BAS9.jpg

kmeeg · November 10, 2010

You can find 4 led dashboard bulbs from SL. There is a shop between panchikawaththa junc and technical junc. more towards panchikawaththa junc. can't remember the name of the shop though.. As i remember pair of bulbs were Rs150. You can buy in different colours..

Another point this was not 100% success for my corolla dx wagon. It was bright near the bulb but not other areas as led light doesn't spread much light.

jdnet · November 10, 2010

On 11/10/2010 at 6:15 AM, kmeeg said:

You can find 4 led dashboard bulbs from SL. There is a shop between panchikawaththa junc and technical junc. more towards panchikawaththa junc. can't remember the name of the shop though.. As i remember pair of bulbs were Rs150. You can buy in different colours..

Another point this was not 100% success for my corolla dx wagon. It was bright near the bulb but not other areas as led light doesn't spread much light.

as I mentioned before, I'm not having issues with the lighting of the whole thing. The only issue is with the guage needles. I believe that 4 led ones wouldn't solve my problem either.