ncd
10-26-2006, 04:40 AM
... the saga continues!!
not sure its remotly worth the hassel or the $
Why change em? welll I love my dails during the day but come night the nasty feeling old & regimented orange surfaces and that for most car owners it wouldnt be a big deal.. just change to coloured leds of your liking.. and on their black faces with more transparent areas of ilumination, your results would be moreless how you expect, but with our "sport" gauges they virge on opaque... and are just damn right weird in terms of how the react to light..
the colour you want isnt the colour you get, different lights or prehaps wavelengths cause different outputs..
*BOOOM* this is already feeling complicated aint it LOL..
basically this seemingly harmless mod is a nightmare to get what you expect..
which is a big fat brightly glowing set of dails with evenly dispersed light in the colour of your led/bulb!
the problem..
4 bulbs make up the total sum of all back light for all three dails.. and the faces of the dails must be engineered specially for the orange light that the oem bulbs emit.. this is basically a massive complication unless you dont mind some other gauges and all the hassel of getting them reproged.
so it seems the "ivory" dails are at a cost..
the extremes ive gone to boggle my mind considering I am still not 100% happy..
1) ultra bright leds (individuls)
2) more brighter leds (flat tops with high 180 viewing angle specially designed for automative applications) (indiduals)
3) Incandesant Lights / Neon Tube
4) 25x Flexible Led Strip
Individual leds will not get you any where near the required spec, its would be like comparing a small energy efficiant compact flouresent to a high presure sodium lamp. you will not get your miles lighting up properly, nor will the needles glow equally also lcds you get "bright patchs" even with the supposably better leds.
Neon strips == genrally to big and to much heat, leads to many other problems, mainly your ballast will blow up, Im not even sure they like a car bat as the power source.
however they do create some interesting results.. heheh see my pic later on in this thread the green reminds me of the evil green coloured eyes the guy had in one of stephen kings night mares and dream scapes eps
the thing is with neon tubes the actual internal neon tube component are very small and can be slithered in but they kick out so much heat somehting would probably catch on fire, like in my case the bulb fell out of a notch and melted against its plastic housing and blew up the ballast..
they are easily bright enough, but lack the light dispersion, though multiples would probably result in the brightest dash lighting on the planet :). just to fragile & unstable & safty risk imo.
The best bet is to go with the led STRIP and wireing into a auxillarly power source, for a start they can manouvered in place, they give the right light dispersion, and glow the MILES, numbers and notchs, and it glows the needles equally.. another good reason is they have individual over current protection on each led.. & also can be cut to smaller length.. pritty cool stuff.. but astoundingly for our application still not really bright enough, but this is because of the extreme opaque'ness.
The only arguable side effect of wiring is having your dash glow when the lights are not on but i kind of like it.. one of the biggest give aways on how weak design is, you turn on the lights and its nothing much changed.. just glows a tiny bit more where the flexi led cant get... what a joke..
the strip makes the best start.. i was thinking when i got some spare money i will get another one..
with the strip its iluminated enough to see the black ring glowing fairly bright in daylight, gives all the other items like "LIM" and "MPH" "VDO" a blue tinge.
tips..
only white & orange & red light seem to be good for the lcd backlights with suitability for daylight in mind..
after trying blue againt for the lcd it seems fine during night.....
the flat-top leds are just that bit better interms of the "birght patchs"
yet to see green though.
one thing im curious about now is to see how the led strip and oem bulbs together perform & look since the end colour is unpredictable.
my current dash is bright blue on the kph ring, and the miles are whiteish trying to be blue/green.. to hard to describe ha!
pic soon
day light
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3263/dscn1875zp7.th.jpg (http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn1875zp7.jpg)
night light
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6291/dscn1880rq3.th.jpg (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn1880rq3.jpg)
Has any one with a sport tryed RED?
Is the only real solution just move to a w210 instrument cluster. the hassel being the reprogramming but there some tools out their.
I know alot of you guys have red.. Im starting to think red might give the best results on our dails.
if you want some tropical looking dails mix oem and blue leds hah ;)
not sure its remotly worth the hassel or the $
Why change em? welll I love my dails during the day but come night the nasty feeling old & regimented orange surfaces and that for most car owners it wouldnt be a big deal.. just change to coloured leds of your liking.. and on their black faces with more transparent areas of ilumination, your results would be moreless how you expect, but with our "sport" gauges they virge on opaque... and are just damn right weird in terms of how the react to light..
the colour you want isnt the colour you get, different lights or prehaps wavelengths cause different outputs..
*BOOOM* this is already feeling complicated aint it LOL..
basically this seemingly harmless mod is a nightmare to get what you expect..
which is a big fat brightly glowing set of dails with evenly dispersed light in the colour of your led/bulb!
the problem..
4 bulbs make up the total sum of all back light for all three dails.. and the faces of the dails must be engineered specially for the orange light that the oem bulbs emit.. this is basically a massive complication unless you dont mind some other gauges and all the hassel of getting them reproged.
so it seems the "ivory" dails are at a cost..
the extremes ive gone to boggle my mind considering I am still not 100% happy..
1) ultra bright leds (individuls)
2) more brighter leds (flat tops with high 180 viewing angle specially designed for automative applications) (indiduals)
3) Incandesant Lights / Neon Tube
4) 25x Flexible Led Strip
Individual leds will not get you any where near the required spec, its would be like comparing a small energy efficiant compact flouresent to a high presure sodium lamp. you will not get your miles lighting up properly, nor will the needles glow equally also lcds you get "bright patchs" even with the supposably better leds.
Neon strips == genrally to big and to much heat, leads to many other problems, mainly your ballast will blow up, Im not even sure they like a car bat as the power source.
however they do create some interesting results.. heheh see my pic later on in this thread the green reminds me of the evil green coloured eyes the guy had in one of stephen kings night mares and dream scapes eps
the thing is with neon tubes the actual internal neon tube component are very small and can be slithered in but they kick out so much heat somehting would probably catch on fire, like in my case the bulb fell out of a notch and melted against its plastic housing and blew up the ballast..
they are easily bright enough, but lack the light dispersion, though multiples would probably result in the brightest dash lighting on the planet :). just to fragile & unstable & safty risk imo.
The best bet is to go with the led STRIP and wireing into a auxillarly power source, for a start they can manouvered in place, they give the right light dispersion, and glow the MILES, numbers and notchs, and it glows the needles equally.. another good reason is they have individual over current protection on each led.. & also can be cut to smaller length.. pritty cool stuff.. but astoundingly for our application still not really bright enough, but this is because of the extreme opaque'ness.
The only arguable side effect of wiring is having your dash glow when the lights are not on but i kind of like it.. one of the biggest give aways on how weak design is, you turn on the lights and its nothing much changed.. just glows a tiny bit more where the flexi led cant get... what a joke..
the strip makes the best start.. i was thinking when i got some spare money i will get another one..
with the strip its iluminated enough to see the black ring glowing fairly bright in daylight, gives all the other items like "LIM" and "MPH" "VDO" a blue tinge.
tips..
only white & orange & red light seem to be good for the lcd backlights with suitability for daylight in mind..
after trying blue againt for the lcd it seems fine during night.....
the flat-top leds are just that bit better interms of the "birght patchs"
yet to see green though.
one thing im curious about now is to see how the led strip and oem bulbs together perform & look since the end colour is unpredictable.
my current dash is bright blue on the kph ring, and the miles are whiteish trying to be blue/green.. to hard to describe ha!
pic soon
day light
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3263/dscn1875zp7.th.jpg (http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn1875zp7.jpg)
night light
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6291/dscn1880rq3.th.jpg (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn1880rq3.jpg)
Has any one with a sport tryed RED?
Is the only real solution just move to a w210 instrument cluster. the hassel being the reprogramming but there some tools out their.
I know alot of you guys have red.. Im starting to think red might give the best results on our dails.
if you want some tropical looking dails mix oem and blue leds hah ;)