There were so many bulbs burned out, I couldn't see the speedo at night anymore. Since it was coming out, I tried a couple of ideas.
High brightness white LEDs to replace those hot and short lived illuminators. The trouble with LEDs, is they send out a rather narrow cone of light instead of omnidirectional. I had some plug in LED replacements, which had an inverted cone top to redirect the light in a side circle. Trouble was, this was not the right place for my gauges. Maybe a custom arrangement could use LED illumination, but the plug ins get a big X. The next problem with these gauges is where the turn signal and high beam indicators are jammed into a left over spot. These are too small, the old plastic lenses are gradually turning opaque, and they are directly behind the rim of my steering wheel. Possible solution: put some colored LEDs along the bottom edge of the gauge package. 2 green for each turn signal, a blue for high beam. Drilling a .195" hole (file a little) lets an LED glue in. The LED should be pushed all the way in, bacause there is little room for them behind. But that means they can't be at the very bottom edge, or they will hit the clear cover. The LED beam is somewhat narrow, but plenty wide for the driver. Since it points right into your eye, the power level should be very low. The problem shifts from being invisible, to being too bright. Maybe a resistor to allow 1 ma current. Question is, does there need to be a day/night dimmer for the turn signal indicators? This has promise (that I'll no longer drive down the road with a turn signal running). A little more experimentation should work this out. Maybe another time, I'll take another shot at replacing those troublesome illumination bulbs. Some other work on these units concerns cleaning up poor contacts, which degrades gauge readings and lights. Most of this can be fixed better than new, by a combination of cleaning contact surfaces, and a few wires added to parallel the circuit board paths. The actual gauges are quite reliable. Bruce Roe
