I guess this is the best section for this thread... if not please move it...

I'm getting my 300D ready to go. Finally got the engine swapped in so now I have a "good" engine. Working on the misc. little things here and there and came up with this. The 240D dash lights are so damn weak I decided I would test something out on my 300D since I needed to pull the cluster anyways. I may not be the first to do this but it wasn't that difficult and I figured it may help someone else "brighten" up their dash...

I went down to "the shack" and picked up a few things.... here is my parts list by link to "the shack"

White "flat" LED's (I used two, one in place of each light bulb)
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index....Id=3060973

Multipurpose PCB (Again only one is needed, just cut it in two pieces)
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index....Id=2102845

330ohm 1/4w Resistor (5 in a pack so only one pack)
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index....+resistors

And then you will need some misc small wire.

What I did was solder the LED on the end of the "slice" of PC board and then hook up the needed + and - wires. Once you have the LED's wired and and test them to make sure you have it all wired properly you're ready to install.

What I did was pull out the stock "fiber optic" pieces (at least thats what I call them) and replace them with the PCB with the LED's wired. First pic is the fiber optic piece and the second is the LED wired and ready to go. This is the "prototype" so please excuse the sloppy soldering! I changed the config a couple times so there's extra solder on the PCB that doesn't need to be there...





Once I had the LED's wired to the PCB I needed to wire them in some how. What I did was take the bulb holder out and pull the metal pieces that provide the contacts out of the brown holder. Then I soldered the wires from the PC board to the metal pieces inside the bulb holder and put the bulb holders back together. Since the LED will only provide light when the + and - are wired correctly, what I did was wire it up and plug it in and then figure out which side was + and -. All you have to do is spin the brown bulb holder 180 degrees if you don't get light and that should do it. I marked the back of the gauge cluster so if I ever need to take them out or anything I know which side is which so there's no guessing.

Now you just have to put it back together. Much better lights! I don't know how it looks in the car yet but I ran a 9v battery to it to see how bright it was in a "dark" room. Here's what it looks like when you're finished... sorry for the pretty crappy blackberry pictures...

Here's the lights ready to go into the cluster replacing the old plastic "fiber optic" piece...



From the top.... can't really tell anything is different... except on the left side where I broke the small plastic tab... no biggie though because you wont see it



Here's one from the bottom showing the LED peaking through...



And the final pic... Lights on! They are much brighter than they seem in the picture... I wish I had a before and after but I wasn't thinking about it and I don't feel like taking it apart



I need to work on a way to dim the lights... the stock rheostat wont dim the LED's because they work different than traditional light bulbs. That will be the next step once the car is running... I don't think they are too bright but they are WAY brighter than the stock lights.

1983 300D Silver Exterior/Black inside - Euro headlights, Ronal R9 15X7 wheels with 205/60r15 Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S tires
2007 Chevy 2500HD CCSB Duramax with about 400-500 rwhp depending on the tune I use

this is great, I have always wanted to do this. I have read where people repainted the sockets with white paint for some improvement.

Is it possible to wire in those LED's clusters that can switch from white to red to green?

(04-26-2010 03:32 PM)dropnosky Wrote:  this is great, I have always wanted to do this. I have read where people repainted the sockets with white paint for some improvement.

Is it possible to wire in those LED's clusters that can switch from white to red to green?

Red would be great, keeps your night vision.

I'm sure you could wire them that way... i would do it with a switch so you could change it to whatever color you want. But if you're using them at night and want red for night vision why not just put red LED's in instead? these aren't that bright at night and you could always get a different resistor to bring the brightness down a notch...

I was mistaken... the rheostat does dim the LED's but it's not very much. You can tell it dims them but it's not a huge difference in brightness...

1983 300D Silver Exterior/Black inside - Euro headlights, Ronal R9 15X7 wheels with 205/60r15 Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S tires
2007 Chevy 2500HD CCSB Duramax with about 400-500 rwhp depending on the tune I use

(04-26-2010 10:47 PM)capflya Wrote:  I'm sure you could wire them that way... i would do it with a switch so you could change it to whatever color you want. But if you're using them at night and want red for night vision why not just put red LED's in instead? these aren't that bright at night and you could always get a different resistor to bring the brightness down a notch...

I was mistaken... the rheostat does dim the LED's but it's not very much. You can tell it dims them but it's not a huge difference in brightness...

to effectively control brightness on these you need to make a pulse width modulation circuit. i'm planning on doing this mod (albeit in my own way) for the gauge cluster, glovebox, and dome lights. if anyone needs help on the dimmer circuits i'd be happy to write something up.

Bumping this thread

1983 300D Silver Exterior/Black inside - Euro headlights, Ronal R9 15X7 wheels with 205/60r15 Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S tires
2007 Chevy 2500HD CCSB Duramax with about 400-500 rwhp depending on the tune I use

Awesome. I'm going to have to do something like this. How bright are they without the resistors?

See 1st post last pic lol...

But seriously... they're friggin bright. I get a little glare on the windshield at night because they're so bright. It doesn't bother me enough to mess with them, and I've gotten used to them. But I have to say, it's NICE to be able to see my gauges without having to take focus off the road to figure out what I'm looking at.

I'll see if I can get a picture of them now that they're actually in the car (have been for over a year just never updated the thread).

1983 300D Silver Exterior/Black inside - Euro headlights, Ronal R9 15X7 wheels with 205/60r15 Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S tires
2007 Chevy 2500HD CCSB Duramax with about 400-500 rwhp depending on the tune I use

Maybe I'll try it with 4 or 6 smaller LEDs. It might be a more diffuse lighting. If they are too intense maybe you could try softening the light by lightly sanding the lens. The size and shape of the actual diode you used looks similar to the ones I've seen in smaller flashlights I really like the idea of this mod not only because it's cheap but because it maintains the stock look. I had thought about replacing the bulbs with LEDs in their normal location, but it doesn't seem like that would yield nearly as much improvement.

I had an extreme increase in dash light by simply changing the bulbs and fixing the dimmer pot haha

I jammed a wire into the rivet on the back of each terminal and heaped a gob of solder on it. Mine was in pretty bad shape though. No interior lights, when I got a look at it the spring was all mangled. Still not the blinding.

Yeah... the stock lights supposedly work good when you replace the fiber optic pieces... but that still isn't good enough for me so I had to go LED.

Sorry I still don't have pics... doing suspension work on the car so I spent my day pulling parts and pressing in my new balljoints

1983 300D Silver Exterior/Black inside - Euro headlights, Ronal R9 15X7 wheels with 205/60r15 Michelin Pilot Exalto A/S tires
2007 Chevy 2500HD CCSB Duramax with about 400-500 rwhp depending on the tune I use

I also had to solder a jumper across the ports on the pot