hey everybody,

I need to change the lights in my dashboard. I was wondering if I could put in some LEDs instead of the regular red orange light it has on right now. also the center console and the gear lever. thanks in advance for your help and suggestions. looking forward for it.

 

It's certainly possible to put in LEDs rather than bulbs, though it may take a little fiddling around to fit things in properly. If you search around the forums, I think you'll find at least one or two people who have done it already.

However, if you're looking to change the color of the red/orange bits to something else, you'll have difficulty if all you do is change the light source. The redish color comes from filtering out the other colors in the white light; if you put a blue LED there (for instance), you won't see much of anything because practically all the blue light gets filtered out. (Any whiteish backlights can be changed, though, as they don't have color filters on them.)

 

o.didnt know all of that. can the gauges be changed?i checked ard the site but ppl just showing their gauges. don't know where dey got it frm. and is it possible to connect my reverse lights to my door light too?like when I open the door the reverse light comes on. if I could get a simple DIY could help. thank u

 

Blue lighted dashes are also bad for vision. Blue light focuses in front of the human retina and images appear blurry. You'll notice that if you look at a blue sign at night and compare it to any different colored sign. Furthermore, green to blue light infringes upon the eye's low light sensitivity at night. Red light has no effect. It's why it's used in night vision goggles, military, etc...

 

Oh—you were talking about the tic marks on the gauges and such mainly? I guess I didn't read your initial post quite closely enough; those particular lights IIRC are just LEDs with clear light pipes, so it would be theoretically possible to change the color by putting in different LEDs. They are, however, surface mounted on the gauge cluster unit, so there's a lot of disassembly involved, and some relatively tricky soldering. It's certainly possible if you have the skills and equipment to do it, but it's not the sort of thing that's just plug and play.

I was thinking more of the colored bits indicating e.g. the shifter setting for an automatic transmission. I think the small dashboard indicator lights are also normal bulbs with colored filters, but perhaps I'm mistaken...it wouldn't be the first time. Most, perhaps all, of the non-instrument-panel lights are not LEDs, so far as I know, and so would be colored (if they're colored) by filters.

The US Fits have blue gauge tic marks and such from the factory...maybe you can install a US gauge cluster? I don't know how much difference there is between various gauge clusters to know if this is remotely reasonable, but I'm sure some others here would know. Possibly some would like to trade for a red-orange unit even.

It should be possible to wire up the backup lights to the dome light's door circuit. You'd probably want to use a relay (or some solid-state equivalent, like a properly connected power transistor of some sort) to avoid blowing fuses and to keep the circuits as separated as possible...but it should be doable without too much trouble. I don't think anybody here has attempted this yet to produce a step by step how-to.

As a driver, I'd recommend that you also install a switch to be able to not have the reverse lights come on when you're parked on the street if you do a mod like this. Seeing backup lights on a parked car makes me think the car is about to back up, and so take appropriate actions to make sure we don't try to both occupy the same spot at the same point in time, and doubly so if the brake lights aren't also on.