Hey crew, i reckon i'm onto something here...

I want blue instrument cluster backlighting, but i hate the effect of blue LED's. You see, LED's have a very narow lighting angle which can and does make the dial segments light up unevenly and blotchy. The needles also don't light up correctly, some light up more than others and just looks tacky in my opinion.

So i sat down and thought about what i wanted. An even, vivid, electric blue light but not so bright that it makes it annoying to drive with at night. I wanted to keep the same 'EL' style of dial too. Another requirement was to have all red sections of the dials and needles to light up the way they used to, orange and red. I reckon the blue and orange contrast very well.

So what i did was to head down to BigW and grab a pack of those super-thin plastic file dividers, for around 50c. The good thing about getting a whole pack is that you have different colours to play with too, if you don't like blue and at 50c, you can't go wrong!

To cut out the plastic is extremely easy, just trace around the standard dials and cut out with a scalpel. The thinner the plastic, the better so there isn't so much 'bulk' behind the dials. If the plastic is too thick, it will push the dials outward and the needles will rub and you don't want this, obviously.

I tested the plastic behind the dials on a lightbox and all i can say is that it looks brilliant. Nice even lighting, not too over-the-top but still a nice effect and the best part, it costs you a couple of hours of your time and 50c all up! This was my first attempt, the cut-out looks very rushed (which it was), but i'm happy with the effect, so i'm going to take my time on making a good set and i'll let you know how it turns out and take some photo's when it's all finished!

Pics of them working at night!

Yep, as soon as i get the good set finished, in the next day or two. I want everything to be 'swiss watch'

Great effort!
Excellent Pics!

Been done this way many times!

Best part about it is the fact u dont have as bad dim lighting up the top and you don't loose the orange warning levels!

good to see the breakdown!

Really!? Man, i must be blind haha. I've never read about it being done this way . Oh well, maybe it's not that original after all

nice work. I want my lane cluster to be blue but i dont want to take the needles off because you can never get them back to the original position.

I did the exact same this except i put red under the redline and also orange needles.

the dark patch is 1 LED that has died and the odo LED died too.

Damn cheap basturds.



Notice the narrow and blotchy effect of the LED's that aren't frosted or any modification to the LED's at all?

P.S to get the needles back on at the same spot is easy, i put my speedo and tacho ones on at about the 9 o'clock mark then turned them until they were at zero, and the fuel and temp i took a photo first.

Not hard when ya think of it.

Anyone know where the doco for swapping a BA XT Dash to a XR6 dash is? Search not working.

im thinking of doing this mod soon but im wondering ya recon ba falcon needles would fit on the needle bits that are joined to the cluster

cheers
justin

I'd love to do that to my ED Fairmont dash but I'm unsure how to take the dash apart without breaking it.....Any advice would be great.
Thanks.

*subscribes to thread*

My blue Leds are poop. Uneven and I want my redline back lol.

If it turns out anything like Davehimself's then damnit I'm on it this weekend. Or the next...

I did that in my AU except i used red paper.

Yeah DO NOT USE coloured LED's for this mod, it's s**t, it'll be s**t, look s**t, and be s**t.

Use white ones and coloured filters.

Are std bulbs okay though?

Great idea! A car I bought a while back had blue LED's fitted to the cluster and it just looked crap IMO.

I hope standard bulbs will be okay, but at 1.5watts they're not the brightest around. I'll see if i can track down some 3-5watt wedge globes. Narva and Hella don't seem to make any high wattage globes in that size. So hopefully i can pick up some cheap imports from Supercrap or Auto One.