Something to consider about SMD LED's:
Interior LED Changeover (uhm...Looooong)
http://www.superbrightleds.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you haven’t yet switched to LED instrument lighting, you just don’t know what
you are missing. This of course is my opinion. However, look at the new cars out
there, they use LED. Why?...because they last longer, draw less current and
produce a vivid light with distinct color. In comparison to incandescent
filament, it is like comparing the point at which the world changed from candle
light to incandescent. It is just the technological succession in lighting.
I changed out every bulb in the interior with the exception of several of the
cluster bulbs which I will address in a bit. It is recommended that if you are
rear lighting a colored lens, that you use the same color bulb. I disagree…at
least for interior lighting. Exterior, I would follow this suggestion. There are
a few instances where I used LED’s when it wasn’t necessary. I already owned
them and tested, so I may have just left them in. Another thing to note is that
I did this on a 1993 GTS, your instrument cluster, clock light and cig lighter
light may be different.
I wrote this up to help those who have considered this, but didn’t want to
assemble or couldn’t find all of the info in one place. I hope this helps.
Also, let me say now that I used Wojtek, of southern California’s website as a
guide for my change over. He is a fantastic fellow for doing the research he did
to make these changes possible. Of course, I had embellished on a few things as
maybe you will as well. Please use his site as a guide to help you through your
modifications.
http://members.cox.net/my_1987s4_928_b/LED%20illuminaiton.htm )
NOTES:
1) LED’s for the most part are polar specific, meaning there is a positive side
and a negative side. They MUST be installed correctly in regard to the polarity
of the circuit
2) Have a 9v battery with two leads and alligator clips at each end. This will
allow you to not only check polarities, but also check your work as you assemble
and install. You don’t want to get it all back together and find out you have a
bulb 180 degrees out of polarity or a bad connection or improper lighting
adjustment as in a few cases.
3) Buy extra bulbs! You will undoubtedly get a bad one or two, break one or two
or lose one or two.
4) These bulbs all work off of a 12v system, DO NOT apply more than 12v to any
of this stuff, ESPECIALLY the instrument cluster.
5) At the bottom is a reference chart as to what type bulb goes where
6) It is difficult to take accurate photos of this type of lighting as it seems
a high end camera is the only option. That I don’t have so my best efforts were
made to get the best possible photos that I could.
7) DISCONNECT THE BATTERY BEFORE YOU DO ANY WORK ON ELECTRICAL.
COURTESY LIGHTING
The first and easiest is the courtesy lighting throughout. 6 lights total.
Festoon bulbs, 4 are the same for the doors, rear overhead/dome and rear hatch.
The glove box light is a shorter festoon type bulb. The center light above the
mirror is basically a reading/map
light which requires a brighter bulb. This will take a more intense bulb for
actually reading something at night. BTW, this same bulb will work well for the
engine bay light if yours is of the festoon type. (These have such a low draw
that you can leave the hood open all day and the bulb will not get hot nor run
down your battery. As for lighting at night, they do as good, if not a better
job under the hood)
DOOR MARKERS
These are of the bayonet type and I used Red. I think white would work well, but
after all is said and done the difference in the filament and the LED is hardly
noticeable. This is due to the thick red lens of the door marker.
CIGARETTE LIGHTER
I removed mine and ditched the bulb, but it uses the same bulb as the pod
switches.
CLOCK
Rather easy to get to. A fixed base bulb with a 1/4 twist located at the rear of
the unit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT BAR
Geez, I have seen all types of these things. All I can say is there are 2 lights
in mine, one for the AC button and the other for the door lock button. You will
need to remove this unit and disassemble…just do it with care. It is possible
however, to just replace the AC bulb by removing the button itself at the face
of the unit. By squeezing the opposing ends, you work the cover off. This will
give you visible access to the bulb. If you have never done this, then I
recommend playing it safe and disassembling the thing…it’s quite easy. As for
the door lock button bulb, it is a soldered in place bulb. I chose to leave it
as is since it is a two stage light that would need a resister soldered in. The
quality of lighting is pretty vivid to begin with and I expect replacing with an
LED wouldn’t be worth the work. You guys with the blue and green buttons, well,
make your best choice.
HVAC
This is the fun one! It’s going to require a strong stomach, steady hands and
craftiness. Let me explain how this thing works before I tell you how to make it
better. There are two wedge based bulbs in here that for the most part, are
directed and reflected towards the temperature/function plastic lens in the
center of the unit. Then what you have is fiber optic lighting that is
piggybacked off of these two bulbs. If I recall correctly, there are two fiber
optic lines from each bulb, two on top and two on the bottom. For both top and
bottom, one line runs to a slider knob, lighting the knob face and the other to
the rotary fan knob, lighting the numbers and fan HI and LO.
To improve this, you are going to have to improvise a better set up. First, you
are going to have to remove the existing bulbs and then you are going to have to
rewire from the circuit board for the new LED bulbs as they require a 1w_200ohm
resistor. This is because what I used was a bare wire lead LED not in any kind
of base. Most base mounted LED’s have a resistor inside. Brush up on your
soldering skills cause you’re gonna need it. You could just use replacement
wedge base bulbs, but the beam pattern is not going to allow you to get a good
enough light intensity through the fiber optics. After you have fit your
resistor and wired your LED, you will need to fit the bulbs into the openings
where the original bulbs were. The issue you will now be faced with is that the
LED’s do not have a full omni-directional lighting pattern that a filament bulb
does. The LED’s are projective or for the most part, uni-directional. I tell you
this because the bases of the fiber optics are set perpendicular to the bulbs.
When the LED is pushed all of the way into its socket, the fiber optic base
meets the LED behind the projected beam. In essence, you are going to have to
get the bulbs back a little so as to allow the fiber optics to catch enough
light to brightly do their job. Having the wire leads to the LED’s allows you to
make minor adjustments for this.
As for the fiber optics, slip them back into the same sockets to adjust the LED
bulbs. I had also drilled a little deeper into the slider lenses to get a
brighter light at the slider head. From the fiber optic lines...just be careful
if you do this so you don’t to drill all the way through. You will end up
needing to fill it in and start over again. I am sure some kind of glue will
work well enough to fill the hole, but best to avoid this of course.
Lastly, I lit the fan knob itself. No, it has no lighting. I took the top pair
of fiber optic lines and added a third line. I made the fiber optic line with
several strands of fiber and heat shrink. I opened up the coupling where the
fiber optic meets the LED bulb and stuffed a third line in there and then
re-crimped. It’s a bit tricky, but you have to run the new fiber optic line to
the back of the fan knob bezel.
All in all, you are going to have to pull the knobs and sliders off and really
disassemble this thing to get to what you need to make it work. Refer to
Wojtek’s site to help you with visuals and illustrations. You will need to be
pretty good with a drill as well.
INSTRUMENT CLUSTER
I did a bit of testing with this part. I ordered several LED’s to see what
colors would work best. I had replaced the 4 main back lights with the proper
LED replacement bulbs. I have to say that if there is a single best thing in
using the LED’s it is this right here. It totally changed the viewing of the
instruments and daylight viewing is very vivid….no more squinting to see the
gauges. Replacing these bulbs and all others in the cluster is very easy.
Getting the cluster out though, takes patience. I was removing the whole shebang
before I read Shocki’s post on removing the cluster in 15 minutes. Not sure I
agree with the time frame, but the idea works and works well! So once you have
the cluster out, you will need to release the 4 locking clips and carefully open
the back housing. There is a multi pin plug that connects through the backing so
go easy.
The main back lighting bulbs are wedge and plug into the bases. If I remember
correctly, you can check for good bulb seating with the 9v as there are exposed
leads on the outside of the base holder. Make sure you correctly place the bulbs
with their respective polarities into the circuit board You can check this with
the the rear of the cluster closed and tabs locked using the photo shown below.
Do this as a final check JUST for the back lighting. You will undoubtedly be
sure that all 4 bulbs are properly seated and polarity correct.
As for the rest of the cluster, it is entirely up to you if you would prefer
LED’s. They are all fixed base bulbs. I think it is important to note here, that
LCD and LED do not mix well! I had tried different combinations and due to the
LED’s being a focused or projected beam pattern, LCD requires a wide “washed”
pattern of light.. I used white, yellow and red LED bulbs for testing and they
just did not do as good of a job as the original filament bulbs. However, I did
change out the lower LCD display to 2w VW bulbs (green base). These are the
bulbs with red latex covers over them, so you will need to transfer the covers.
The red now jumps out of the display. Use the original 1.5w (yellow base) bulbs
for the normal display as anything brighter just adds to the background lighting
and the contrast/definition is not as good. Besides, this panel is as crisp as
it is going to get using the filament bulbs.
I did decide to change a few bulbs over that got a fair amount of usage and I
did like the way they looked with the LED bulbs. I used green LED’s for the
Parking Lights and Turn Signal indicator. I had tried a blue LED for the Hi
Beams, but white worked much better. You guys that have automatic tranny’s may
want to use LED’s as I have a feeling they would work much better than the
filament bulbs. There are a couple more that I probably would have changed over
like the Low Fuel and the PSD, but I don’t see those indicators much of the
time. For the most part, the indicators around the cluster are pretty vivid and
bright to begin with…especially the red so I saw no need to fool with them.
Changing out really wouldn’t make much difference color wise. I did have to
modify the backing cover to close over the Parking Light LED base. It stuck too
far up so I drilled a hole to accommodate.
Make sure you check your connections and polarities before you button every
thing back up. Just to be safe, when you get the cluster reconnected to the four
harnesses, reattach the battery and just turn the key to the #1 position to make
sure everything functions. You can check your turn signals and such at that time
as well. If it all works, disconnect the battery and finish putting everything
back together.
POD KNOBS
If you’re doing this mod, may as well do the instrument cluster as you will now
have to remove the pod completely. All knobs/switches need to be disconnected
and removed. You will need full access to the switch wiring. Following Wojtek’s
schematics, you will need to install resistors to the switches that will dim
when not in use such as the Fog, Rear Defrost and Hazard. Solder in the
resistors and heat shrink over them. As for the wedge base bulbs, they will not
slip right into the switch socket. I had to file down and custom fit the bases
some to allow the bulb base to fit properly. This is where the 9v battery came
in handy too. There may be other wedge base bulbs out there by other
manufacturers that will fit better, but which ones, I don’t know. Again,
polarity has to be correct.
This mod to the lighting was way beyond well worth it. It’s one of those things
that you wonder how you ever lived without it. I know there is concern about
dimming as the dimmer switch hardly works now. I personally don’t think you need
the dimmer switch for LED as the light is not necessarily brighter, but more
vivid and concentrated. There are dimmer switches available for LED lighting,
but that is something you will have to decide if you need. To me, the light
isn’t all that bright or distracting at night. Daylight viewing is excellent and
to be honest, I never knew I had it until I installed the LED’s. Your headlight
switch and cluster are illuminated all of the time as soon as you turn the key
past the #1 position. No more do I have to squint to see the gauges during the
day. Clear as a bell and easy to read anytime. As for the rest of the lighting
at night, no longer is there an weak amber glow to anything, it is all crisp
cool white and very vivid, not to mention the updated look that you get. It’s a
fun and satisfying modification that is well worth the effort. Also, there is no
issue with current draw and faulty lighting issues. The two stage lighting on
the pod switches works great also!
I have made a list of the bulbs and their respective placement in the car. I
hope this will help others if they choose to do the change over. I had gotten
all of my bulbs from SUPERBRIGHT LED.
http://superbrightleds.com I think other LED companies may have their
own part numbers, but it shouldn’t be tough figure out what you need.
The following is for the last inception of the clusters with the LCD info
screen. I have listed the possible bulbs for replacement if anyone is
interested.
INSTRUMENT CLUSTER
WLED 5-LED WIDE ANGLE WEDGE BASE LED BULB [White]
(4) Instrument Cluster Main Back Lighting
#74 WEDGE BASE LED BULB (see colors next to item)
(4) LCD Display [White]
(4) LCD Display [Red]
(6) P R N D 3 2 [white] or P=(1)[Red], R=(1)[Blue], N=(1)[White], D 3
2=(3)[Green]
(1) Low Fuel [Orange]
(1) Low Oil [Red}
(1) Low Battery [Red]
(1) High Temperature [Red]
(1) Brake [Red]
(1) Parking Brake [Red}
(1) Seat Belt [Red]
(1) Antilock [Orange]
(1) Trailer Connection [Green]
(1) Turn Signal [Green]
(1) Hi Beam [White]
(1) Tire Pressure [Red]
(1) Parking lights [Green]
(1) Check Engine [Red]
(1) Stop Lamp [Red]
(1) PSD [Green]
POD SWITCHES
#74 WEDGE BASE LED [White]
(1) Headlight
(1) Fog + 1K ohm 1w resistor
(1) Trip Reset
(1) Rear Window Defog + 1K ohm 1w resistor
(1) Hazard + 1K ohm 1w resistor
CIGARETTE LIGHTER
#74 WEDGE BASE LED [White]
(1) Cigarette Lighter
INTERIOR COURTESY LIGHTING
HID HIGH POWER LED FESTOON BULB 42mm [White]
(1) Map Light
(1) Dome Light
(2) Convenience Light
(1) Cargo Light
GLOVE BOX
3022 x 4 LED FESTOON BULB 30mm [White]
(1) Glove Box
HVAC
SUPERBRIGHT WHITE LED 11C 5mm [White]
1w_200ohm resistor 1W120-NTE HVAC
(2) HVAC (two sliders and fan switch)
#74 WEDGEBASE LED [White]
(1) HVAC (back light)
CLOCK
74 WEDGEBASE LED [White]
(1) Backlight
AC
#74 WEDGEBASE LED [White]
(1) Button Backlight
ASHTRAY
BA9s 1-LED Bayonet Base bulb [White]
(1) Cigarette Lighter (backlight)
DOOR
BA9s-x-WV WIDE ANGLE BULB [Red]
(2) Open Door Marker
928NTSLOW, Keith Widom
============
Liste der benötigten LEDs (Euro Modell GTS)
Die Links verweisen jeweils auf die von Ed empfohlenen Quellen in den USA als
Referenz. Ich konnte nur die LEDs für die Pod-Schalter,
Instrumentenhintergrundbeleuchtung und die normalen LEDs (Warnleuchten wie z.B.
Airbag, ABS usw.) nicht finden. Die restlichen SMD-LEDs, 3 und 5 mm LEDs waren
bei Ebay zu finden (auch in verschiedenen Farben).
Tipp: Von jeder LED am besten eine extra bestellen! Ich hatte Glück und nur eine
grüne LED war bei mir defekt.
Innenraumleuchten
6x 42 mm Feston type SMD LED (passt für alle Innenlichter außer Handschuhfach)
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cat/festoon-series-bulbs/filter/Base,4210,1,5040:
1x 30 mm Feston type SMD LED (Handschuhfach)
http://www.superbrightleds.com/products/led-products/230,231,232/
AC Taste und Paniktaste
1x AC Taste
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/227/
1x 5 mm LED rot Abstrahlwinkel 60°
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/component-leds/5mm-red-led-60-degree-viewing-angle-1500-mcd/278/1205/
1x 1,8 kOhm Widerstand „Paniktaste gedimmt“ (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
1x 680 Ohm Widerstand „Paniktaste hell“ (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
Sitzmemorytastereinheit
4x 3mm superweiße LEDs Abstrahlwinkel 45°
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/component-leds/white-3mm-led-45-degree-viewing-angle-6000-mcd/302/1234/#
1x Widerstand 680 Ohm für Memorytaster (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
Rücksteller Tageskilometerzähler
1x 3mm superweiße LED Abstrahlwinkel 45°
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/component-leds/white-3mm-led-45-degree-viewing-angle-6000-mcd/302/1234/
Schalter Instrumentenpod
2x Super High Power 1 Watt Super-Charged LED Bulb (grün)
http://www.autolumination.com/74.htm
2x Super High Power 1 Watt Super-Charged LED Bulb (amber/gelb)
http://www.autolumination.com/74.htm
1x Super High Power 1 Watt Super-Charged LED Bulb (rot)
http://www.autolumination.com/74.htm
1x Widerstand 1 kOhm für Schalter Heckscheibenheizung (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
3x Widerstand 1,8 kOhm für Nebellampen und Warnleuchte (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
Cockpitinstrumente
12x B8.4D LED Bulb - Instrument Panel LED (rot) z.B. Airbagleuchte
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb--instrument-panel-led/222/
4x B8.4D LED Bulb - Instrument Panel LED (grün)z.B. Blinker
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb--instrument-panel-led/222/
1x B8.4D LED Bulb - Instrument Panel LED (blau) Fernlicht
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb--instrument-panel-led/222/
1x B8.4D LED Bulb - Instrument Panel LED (gelb) Tankreserve
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb--instrument-panel-led/222/
6x B8.4D LED Bulb - High Power Instrument Panel LED (weiß) Position Wahlhebel
Automatik
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb-high-power-instrument-panel-led/223/
4x B8.4D LED Bulb - High Power Instrument Panel LED (gelb/amber) Cockpitdisplay
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb-high-power-instrument-panel-led/223/
4x B8.4D LED Bulb - High Power Instrument Panel LED (rot) Cockpitdisplay
“Warnung”
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb-high-power-instrument-panel-led/223/
4x 194 LED Bulb - 5 SMD LED Wide Angle Wedge Base(weiß) Hintegrundbeleuchtung
Analoginstrumente
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/wedge-bulbs/194-led-bulb-5-smd-led-wide-angle-wedge-base/206/
1x 380 Ohm Widerstand für Airbagleuchte (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
2x 380 Ohm Widerstand für Parkleuchte und ABS (Optional) (z.B. Conrad oder Ebay)
Der Effekt ist wirklich sehr gut geworden. Habe auch in der Bucht mittlerweile
verschiedene Anbieter gefunden für die LEDs die ich aus den USA verbaut habe.
Einfach einmal in der Suche "Tachabeleuchtung SMD LED" eingeben und etwas suchen,
dann wird man in allen Farben fündig.
Schocki