LED dash gauges for 03 GT

['03GTinFLA]

I was going to do a write up, but this is more of a "WTF am I doing wrong" write up. So I used blue LED's first, then tried blue bulbs and neither were bright enough. I tried to take a pic but it's not bright enough to show up on my crappy camera. So here's what I did and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

1st take out gauges. This the backside
View attachment 476575
2nd take out lights. I removed the white plastic guard on the back because I didn't have needle nose plier to take the bulbs out. I had to use the gf's tweezers.

Here's a pic #1 is the bulb housing that you take out with needle nose pliers or tweezers. #2 is the Blue bulb. Here is the size info from website "#74 (T5, T1-3/4) bulbs are 3/4" x 1/8" diameter " #3 is the Stock bulb #4 is the Blue LED. Size info "#74 bulbs replace the following bulbs:17 18 37 70 73 79 85 86 2721"
View attachment 476581
website was autolumination.com Very good customer service and product. I just don't think this works for my particular year or something. Are the older stangs 96-98 different gauges. The old thread about changing LED's in the guages has pics that look good but it's all older stangs. I even took the stock gauge face off to see if I could take it apart so it would let the light through better, but it's all one piece. I don't understand why it doesn't work. With the LED's and blue bulbs there is light shining from out the sides and back but it doesn't come through the gauge face.

 

['03GTinFLA]

Bump for Easter Sunday
:SNSign:

 

[BennyBlown2v]

I've tried going this route, replacing the bulbs with blue LED's...

First off, if you're using the stock gauge faces there is a green translucent coating on them, so they glow green. I replaced my gauge faces with MAC white gauge faces (which have an "aqua" blue hue to begin with), then the blue LED's made it darker...way darker...so dark it's hard to see the dummy gauges. Also, the blue light is of a shorter wavelength than white light, so it won't transmit through the needles or faces to begin with. My solution to this was to buy EL glow type gauges from Speedhut.com - but somehow my order got messed up (not to mention the redline was at the wrong place) and I never installed them.

If I was to mess with my gauges again, I would go with UPR reverse glow...and just forget about the whole swapping of LED's and such.

 

[Dorsai]

Usually with LED lights the only thing that can go wrong is voltage. If they are not bright enough then you may not have enough volts hitting the LED in your instrument panel.

The other thing is the LED you have may have been designed to emit light in a particular direction, such as straight out the tip, in which case you need a diffusion LED that will emit light in all directions to get a good even light effect behind the panel.

Benny also makes a good point about the material maybe be blocking some of the light too.

 

[04gtdrop]

does anyone have any more info on this thread? I would love to do this. But not if it doesnt work....

thanks SN

 

[Mustang5L5]

Not really gonna work for gauges.

Only sucessful colors i have changed were the 3 buttons under the radio. I changed the color from green to blue by changing out the LED's inside.

However, since i couldn't do the HVAC or radio easily, i changed them back to green just to match