Instrament panel dark areas

[aviationfred]

I saw a thread recently that another member had changed the instrament lighting to green. That gave me the idea to change mine to red. I did notice that there were dark areas on his speedo like mine did. I did not like the dark areas of my speedometer and fuel guage.

My solution was to order LED's that had chips around the sides and on the end. Also I removed the white housing that holds the bulbs and lined the entire inner surface with shiny aluminum aircraft tape.

This is the type of LED bulb I used.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/350768919208?var=620114097184&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_3026wt_1399



Fred

[fj11.5]

Looks great fred, nice work mate

[oz.fj]

Looks great fred, nice work mate

+1 Mine needs doing too.

[Country Joe]

  Great find on the LED bulbs. I changed all the bulbs in my instrument panel last fall with supposedly "high output" 194 bulbs, but it doesn't look anything like your picture. Something else to buy.....

    Joe

[Tiger]

  Looks great Fred... I went with Red too...

John.

[Thmsdoyle]

I also agree the red looks great, placed my order last night.

[Charlie-brm]

We're getting more involved with LED lighting at this shop. So me being the science nerd, I interrupt the work to take images and meter the power feeds. Next I'll be getting a LUX meter I'm sure.
Here are some pics of my own FJ1100's cluster comparing the old bulbs to the LEDs. These are 10 element units. They could even be overkill to some people, at least for the indicator lights. On the gauge numbers they are about right. The yellow of the dials is coming from the cluster itself. You can see the odometer numbers are not yellow filtered. There is a blue tinge in the LED output that's obvious.

I compared colours and stayed with the white LEDs through the yellow since it was the easiest for my eyes to distinguish the numbers. Red looks neat but in practice I find it harder to make out the details. I'm sure if I put in red LEDs of this power they would over ride the built in yellow filter of the FJ's gauges.

To retain the gradual brightening of the reserve light where it exists, stay with an incandescent 194 bulb in that socket. LEDs turn on at a voltage threshold. There's nothing gradual about them.

The last instant before the LED goes entirely off. The bulb in the upper image will continue to fade out.


The indicators at peak in the flashing cycle.


Original 194 bulb between 10 element LEDs. Voltage feed is approx. 12.5 V


Size comparison. No problem fitting these LEDs.

[craigo]

That's pretty cool. Are you thinking of making a kit and offering it for sale?

CraigO

[Charlie-brm]

That's pretty cool. Are you thinking of making a kit and offering it for sale?

CraigO

Psychic.
Yes. From now on I am going to all the trouble of documenting all the options and before/after scenarios with a view to packaging with instructions. The installer got ahead of me on some other bikes that were converted to LED. Personally I would have ordered much more "stuff" online over the years if the improvements were recorded or demonstrated. This store does hands on installations of all kinds of 12 volt gear for anything on the road up to $5K stereos so I see it first hand and can tell if it's a 1 hour DIY or a 4 days by a pro kind of project.

Charlie

[Thmsdoyle]

I finally installed the red LEDs in the panel. Looks great! Took it out a few nights ago for the first night run. Huge improvement, thanks Fred for the link.
Tommy D.