supradupra used some bacteria-sized LED's...
that guy's crazy when it comes to LED lightning..
Lol - yep used SMT LEDs to retrofit inside clocks - very fiddly and prob not for everyone...... & I'm just plain crazy period
The black part of the needles can be cut off carefully - it has 2 melted over tabs on the rear of the needle keeping it attached. You have to cut these off to pull it apart, then you can paint the underside of the whole needle then glue the cap back on.
Watch out for the little metal counterweights inside the black caps - these need to go back when gluing up!
How well the needles then light up at night using the stock light guides depends solely on color combination & light sourse so - blue lights lighting orange needles is pretty bright, blue lights lighting red needles tends to be dimmer as the 2 combined colors form dark purple basically.
I keep getting asked about how I relit the needles so thought I may as well post it here too for information.
The stock needles pull their light sourse from the green bulbs in the back of the cluster. This light is carried through light guides and projected into the needles lighting them up.
When you fit LED replacement bulbs this tends to pack up due to the way LEDs direct their light.
What I built to get over this was a tiny light module that fits behind the neeles.
This is built using a fibre washer to mount the tiny surface mount LEDs to and solder them to a couple of small wire tails for connection.
This is no easy task - the picture below shows the LEDs size - thats a standard dress making pin next to it!
I then fitted the light module into the guage workings.
I opened up the hole in the plastic gauge cradle slightly to get shot of the factory light guides & allow mine to shine through - painting the sides of this hole black also stops light leaking back into the gauge face. This then screwed back together and provided a light sorse behind each needle.
The LEDs have the resistor mounted remotely to keep size down and run off of the ignition supply in the instrument cluster which means the needles always light up with ignition on which looks better IMO.
The orange paint just polishes off the needles, this then allows you to paint the rear side of them whatever color you want them.
I also separated off the red line area by modifying the facia light guide slightly and installing red LEDs behind in a separate compartment.
So - thats how it's done - very fiddly but well worth it :yes:
Clock buttons got replaced at same time with clear ones which also illuminate.
so thats the trick.
