I would like to install some nice and bright LED indicator bulbs on my dash. The dash is custom and flat so the lights will definitely stand out. I want one light to be my shift light and 2 lights to be the turn signal lights.
Before you cut holes, tape bulbs in place and use your car at night. If you like the lights at night. go for it!
Ditto on above. LED's when viewed dead on, are very intense at night. To see them clearly in the daytime usually means they are too bright at night. I suggest using a resistor that will "adjust" the brightness of the LED to a reasonable intensity at night and to where you can still see them in the sunlight. This usually means you'll have to shroud them slightly to keep them out of direct sunlight and requires a little trial and error to get it right. This is of course if you are using the Radio Shack variety and not a premade automotive type that has the resistor built in. Make the shift light as bright as you can stand it but make sure you don't look directly at it when it proves out on start up. All of mine are pointed directly at the driver (turn signal indictators, shift light, fan indicator, ac indicator, etc) so they are bright enough to see when light but almost invisible when off. btw, Your instruments look very cool!
Where can I purchase these from? By installing a resister I can basically turn it down with the dimmer correct? Maybe I'll leave the shift light off the dimmer and put the rest of them on the same circuit as the lights for the gauges. thanks for the compliment.
Unfortunately LED's don't react to the dimming circuit the same as a bulb. You could wire 2 resistors to each LED, one with lights on and one without. Wire a resistor with a higher value to the lights on circuit control or just an additional one in series. The circuit is not overly complicated depending on how you do it. Most newer OEM systems use a different control system to vary the intensity of interior LED lighting.(Pulse width modulation circuits). I'm at work and can't download anything on our computers, or I would give you an example of this circuit. I can try later to download the diagrams I used if I can get my scanner to work(and get my teenager off the WOW long enough). I just used a relay to complete the ground in between the resistors to provide the lights off brightness but when the lights come on the relay opens and the ground goes through both resistors reducing the voltage and thus brightness of the LED.
My high beams LED is blue and it was soooo bright I ended up with a 15k ohm resistor is series just to make it "normal". Plan on lots of experimenting...
Thanks for your advice. You need to implement different concepts to get the right result with LED Lights but still these lights are amazing. So bright with very less energy consumption.
