LED gauge needle mod

[Aaron_L]

I've had an Escalade gauge cluster in my Suburban for a while, and I installed white LED's in it before I put it in the truck. I like how it looks, but at night the needles kind of washed out with the rest of the white numbers. I started looking at different colored needles, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna pay $60 for some friggen plastic bits (US Speedo).

So I found these little LED ring and needle kits that were designed for a Vespa of all things, and they were $6 for 2 rings and 2 needles. I bought 4 kits, and tossed the needles in my junk drawer. I finished installing them today, and I like how they turned out. It's still light out, so the white LED's didn't show up well in the pics, but here you go. I'll get a better pic when it's dark out.

Off


On

 

[4WDTRK]

How cool!

 

[#1taho]

OOOOOOO I like that

 

[Aaron_L]

Thanks. I'm trying to get a good photo, but I can't. My phone is picking up a reflection off the silver bezels that you don't see with your eyes. The red isn't nearly as bright as it is in the pics. Otherwise I would have yanked it out already, lol.


The speedo is pretty close in this pic.


Off to the side, it kind of cut down on the reflection a little.

 

[#1taho]

Do you have the kit part number or pics of the conversion? I like it. But curious of the work involved

 

[Aaron_L]

http://scootrs.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=2143

You can get them in red, blue, or green.

 

[#1taho]

Great I will look into them tomorrow thanks man

 

[Aaron_L]

Installing them was a little bit involved, it took some soldering, and disassembly of the cluster. I tested them both inside and on the face of the gauges. When inside the red light would blend with the white background LED's and turn everything pink, so they are glued to the gauge face, right under the needles.

I tested them first with a cordless drill battery. These little suckers are bright.


Here's a pic of them glued down:

The wires are routed through the needle hole.

All of them mounted. They are very tiny. I just used superglue to mount them.


On the back I notched the clear plastic lens with a dremel so the wires could pass through without touching the stepper motors.

I used hot glue to secure the wires to the clear plastic, since the glue is clear I figured it wouldn't affect light output.

Then I soldered all the wires to a larger single negative and positive pair of wires, and heat shrinked it all. Sorry I didn't get a pic. I drilled a small hole in the white plastic dash light "reflector" so the wires could pass through to the circuit board. I have an extra cluster that the board has some bad joints in, so I use it for experimenting, lol. There are two metal jumpers, numbered w11 and w12, that are for the dash lights where they pass over another circuit on the back of the board. I used my multimeter and found wich one was negative and positive. I soldered the wires directly to these jumpers. Any time the background lights are on, the red ones are also. Here's a pic of the board. This is to the left of the speedo:

W12 is negative, and w11 is positive.

Another pic I didn't get (what can I say, I guess I suck at write ups, lol), I painted the clear plastic gauge "lens" black around each needle hole under the stepper motors. That way the white background light won't shine through as much.

I ordered another gauge bezel, because mine was pretty beat up. When I install it I can open it back up and take some more pics if you like.

 

[popo8]

Mannnnn.... that is awesome!

LTXtech.com IS my drug...
OWNER/ADMIN