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i want red backlighting, does anyone know how to illuminate the needles?

Red will illuminate the needles just fine, I had red ones in my corolla, looked evil as it was blood red >_<

They'd be just as easy to do, as someone mentioned LED selection can be critical. My ones were supre brights, so mounting them with the focus to the back of the borad was fine as there was soo much dispersed light that it illuminates the whole dash without light/dark spots.

You can get wide angle LEDs and bit of hot-melt glue on the superbrights can diffuse the beam quite well also.

guys, dezz's ones are decent. compare the brightness to that of the other warning lights.

With stock bulbs, the speedo light is brighter than the other warning lights.

Look at dezz's. They're about the same brightness as the other lights, so they're dimmer than stock.

Look at the ones up the top. they're so much dimmer.

I'm running the dash ones on a dimmer, of course they're dimmer. If I had them full pelt I'd be blinded ;)

You can run the 2 LED's on the limit by only using a 400ohm resistor with them (too bright at 13000mcd) then use the dash dimmer to reduce intensity (if you've got one fitted)

Running 2 LED's in parallel with a 1Kohm resistor you get a fairly good brightness, you can definately make out all the relevant info.

Also a thing to note with the A/C, the bulbs for the LCD screen are actually 5v while the buttons are 12v still run the 1Kohm resistor with them though, as the screen is more transparent and lets more light through...it works out pretty even colour distribution.

To make the LEDs have more light disapation, get some light sand papaer 600 grit or so, and matt athe surface of the LED, this disperses the light and works a charm. You can also cut the top of the led, so it is not directional at all. BUT the matting things works, i use it in a lot of my projects. I have nto done any dash lights yet, but will do soon.

wow that looks pretty good. the xr has bluey purpley lights, i know cause ive got one. thats looks pretty dam close to the xr stockies, but you can see the patches, whereas the xr is an even glow. still looks tops though, good effort

wow that looks pretty good. the xr has bluey purpley lights, i know cause ive got one. thats looks pretty dam close to the xr stockies, but you can see the patches, whereas the xr is an even glow. still looks tops though, good effort

LOL you can't see patches in the car, it's just due to the light response of the camera compared to the human eye. My mate thinks it's almost identical to his Typhoon so he was impressed.

Changed the lights in my dash a while ago. Swapped them for high powered triple LED's in the main dash and single high power LED's in the auxillary gauges.

Blue-dials-002.jpg

Blue-dials-003.jpg

Haven't got round to doing the clock, AC unit and switches yet as that requires soldering in resistors and LED's. Not with my shakey hands. lol

wow that looks pretty good. the xr has bluey purpley lights, i know cause ive got one. thats looks pretty dam close to the xr stockies, but you can see the patches, whereas the xr is an even glow. still looks tops though, good effort

Personally I think it looks purpley because of the red needles, and blue light...red + blue making purple....My autometer gauges are like that, and at an angle they look purple-ish for that reason....

As for the even spread in the XR, its the way the cluster is designed. If you've ever seen inside an R33 cluster, there's like plastic things that guide the light around etc....If its designed to take LED's (which BA's have) then they would design it so that it doesnt have cold spots...as its factory and should look perfect...

Having said that, the first LED's I used were the dark blue just like the thread starters (and much like the XR's) but had cold spots...where as these 1's eliminate cold spots as you can see in my pic above, but are a slightly different shade of blue :)

  • 4 weeks later...

OK I can now get hold of the triple powered LED kits for awesome prices. I've replaced all my blue ones and they're also hella bright :P

The whites give a bit of a pale blue colour in the R34 triple cluster though, must be slightly tinted plastic.

I'll get hold of a decent camera and get the pics...my old Kodak gives dodge results ;)

The LEDs are tri-led angled and give very even coverage.

I'll have to take the dash out to fit the whites and get pics also...so give me some time ;)

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