LED dash kits.

[POPEYE]

Hi Dave, Yes they sound ok, It's gonna be fiddly, a magnifier and twezers job
I wasn't sure if those little bulbs came out or not, Try'd one and it just broke
up, You could always solder the led tails straight onto the pcb once you
dertermine the polarity of the tracks, I found when trying out an led in the
heater thet one didn't give a very good light, The light from led's being only
about 15% around the dead ahead unlike a bulb that gives all round light,
So i ended up drilling holes into the clear plastic to take several leds,
I enjoy this kind of fiddly electricle work haveing done it many times on RC
ships, But this has been a sodding nightmare, so far ive used about a hundred
leds in the heater and instruments to get a decent lighting on all colours and
i still have to fit the colour-change ones yet! The back of the instruments
looks like a telephone junction box, At the risk of being carted off by men in
white coats i'll post some pics when it's all back together, Good luck with
yours mate. Ian

[Morr]

......... The back of the instruments
looks like a telephone junction box, ........... i'll post some pics when it's all back together, .........

Don't forget to post some pics of the telephone juction box stages too

[POPEYE]

Hi Maurice, I can do that now, Should'nt look much worse than this as i've
only about 10 or so colour-change leds to go (when they turn up) It looked
a lot worse untill i tidy'd em up a bit last night, It's been murder glueing em all in so as not to interfere with the speedo and tacho workings, Third pic is the
heater clear plastic bits and the switch panel to controll em, My tacho dial
was coated with black on the reverse side, Looked like overspray but it
was'nt, thats what made the dial dim, Dont know if there all like that? Cleaned
a bit off (4th pic) It all rubbed off easily with a little rocket blaster (only thing to hand) without damageing the dial, All looks ok on the test battery
with the room lights out though! also added a few white ones to light the
pointers, I'll be glad when i've had enough, Ian

[Morr]

Hi Maurice, I can do that now, Should'nt look much worse than this as i've
only about 10 or so colour-change leds to go (when they turn up) It looked
a lot worse untill i tidy'd em up a bit last night, It's been murder glueing em all in so as not to interfere with the speedo and tacho workings, Third pic is the
heater clear plastic bits and the switch panel to controll em, My tacho dial
was coated with black on the reverse side, Looked like overspray but it
was'nt, thats what made the dial dim, Dont know if there all like that? Cleaned
a bit off (4th pic) It all rubbed off easily with a little rocket blaster (only thing to hand) without damageing the dial, All looks ok on the test battery
with the room lights out though! also added a few white ones to light the
pointers, I'll be glad when i've had enough, Ian

Excellent stuff!
The "overspray" is common enough on the rear of backlight dial faces to diffuse the light from the original bulbs, its often in odd block and speckled patterns to create an even illumination across the dial (in theory anyway).
Looking good so far, I've been considering something like this myself, as my present homemade Mph dials are a bit too bright and swatch-like for me. Plus as we've switched to Km's here my originals (If I can ever find them) with some coloured back-lighting should do the trick nicely.

[Dave_bax]

Hi Dave, Yes they sound ok, It's gonna be fiddly, a magnifier and twezers job
I wasn't sure if those little bulbs came out or not, Try'd one and it just broke
up, You could always solder the led tails straight onto the pcb once you
dertermine the polarity of the tracks, I found when trying out an led in the
heater thet one didn't give a very good light,

You were dead right there mate, the LED's aren't really bright enough. Easy enough swap to chage the bulb for the 3mm LED, simply pushing the tails through and bending them around, the flange, 30 sec job. I even left the LED proud by about 1/2inch and then bent it in the direction of the switch facia, but still to dim.

I must admit i like this idea though and i will try to source brighter 12v dc bulbs, think maplin do a 10mm one if i rember rightly, or i will put multiple bulbs into the socket.

I checked out the ECT switch and this is an LED soldered straight to the PCB (can't avoid grabbing me iron there then) with a green difusing tint on the switch itself aswell.

I will let you know. I am trying to avoid the soldering if possible.

[POPEYE]

Dave, Dont know what soldering iron youve got but maplins do a 1mm tip to fit Antex irons, It certainly makes life easier on fiddley stuff!

[Dave_bax]

Dave, Dont know what soldering iron youve got but maplins do a 1mm tip to fit Antex irons, It certainly makes life easier on fiddley stuff!

Yeah i've got a cheap 18w Antex one, i use when i have too. Just a bit fiddly for me. I'm much better welding than soldering.

Am i right Ian, in assuming that the 5mm LED's will be brighter than the 3mm ones? They need to be around twice as bright.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...ce=21&doy=30m1

I must admit although the LED's are dim it does give me an idea on the look, as i have gone for red LED's, and i do think its a big improvement on the standard cream/green.

Cheers for the help fella.

[POPEYE]

Hi, Not to sure about the increase in light / size ratio, I would have thought
its a case of the larger the led the more light emitted due to a larger surface
area of marerial but it may not be any brighter, I see those maplins ones are
not listed as ultra-bright but they give all round light (60% i think it said),
The ones from Phenoptex are bright but are only very bright when veiwed
from head on in fact their pretty blinding, Problem with that heater is you
need very bright and all roundbrightness, No easy way round this that i can see, If you go for a brighter ordinary bulb your limited to size plus it'll probably
burn out quicker, If you use ultra bright leds you need i would say three each
side and you have to use resistors, You can however put the resistor in further
back in the wireing long as you remember the polarity,
Having gone to the trouble of stripping this lot out this is how i would do it,
With the benifiet of hindsight i would have done it that way but its too late now, Also if your only going for one colour it wont be too bad,
Unclip the two clear plastic defusers and carefully drill 2 or 3 x 4mm holes
into the back of em deep enough to take the leds,
Pre solder a lenght of 1mm red and 1mm black (maplins) to the led tails
(red-pos &black-neg)
Space the holes to give a fair distrubition of light and glue (cyno) the leds
in place
Heat shrink sleeve the pos tail refit the defusers and feed the wires through the bulb socket holes and fit the pcb back in,
gather the wires and glue or clip em out the way of the slide controll and solder on the resistors, shrink sleeve em and wire em to the rest of yer leds,
Instrument pod will be a peice of pi$$ compaired with the heater, More
room to manover
Think thats it! sorry its long winded, Ian

[Country-boy]

Just had a look through the posts regarding the LED lighting upgrade..... i was gonna build a PCB and go to all the hassle of mounting LEDs etc on it.... if there is a kit out there that anyof you guys know of then hit me!!! lol

[sdfgsteve]

Just had a look through the posts regarding the LED lighting upgrade..... i was gonna build a PCB and go to all the hassle of mounting LEDs etc on it.... if there is a kit out there that anyof you guys know of then hit me!!! lol

I have spent days searching through the entire damned Internet for information on the lamps used, and finding LED replacements. Things have moved on in the 11 years since this post was up originally, and there are many different types of LEDs now, including point LEDs that give almost 100% coverage, and standard T10/T5 fittings, and replacement housing for them. Problem is, other than the T10/T5 standard lamps behind the dials, the rest seem to be random, even between switches that look similar. I've yet to find an authoritative list of specs for each lamp position. This is compounded by the fact that most threads are old, and the links to various retailers don't work any more!

I've spent most of my time behind the dials, so (iirc) there are 3 T10s, and 11 T5s. Most of the T5s are for the signal lamps (ECT, full beams, oil etc), which aren't coloured by the lamp, but by the dial fascia itself. Also, there is one lamp affecting the low fuel light that won't work with an LED (LEDs need little power to light, and the low fuel light works by variable voltage - with an incandescent lamp it's fine, but with an LED even at a full tank there is enough voltage coming through to turn the damned thing on! I'm sure there would be a way to mitigate this, but it's beyond my ken.)

In the end, given how variable LEDs can be in terms of light distribution, it's difficult to find something that will work perfectly in the dash. Like I said there are lots of different types of LED these days, like cob ones where there are arrays of LEDs around a central shaft, but I found that even those had problems (the light pipes that distribute the light through the dash lined up with the corners of the arrays on a cob, or the point LEDs sat too high or too low to the pipe) so I just went back to normal lamps, but they still need replacing, so I still need the specs heh.

As for the rest, who knows! There is lots of useful information here, but the pictures are now missing, so it's difficult to work out from just the words. I'm not even that fussy about most switches etc, I've been trying to find information on replacing the auto gear stick light and heater controls on my 3rd gen. If anyone is still around who has done this, maybe we can all work together to create a definitive guide with part specs, pictures etc?

[Trunks]

Some good info here:

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-ge...ghts-faqs.html

I have spent days searching through the entire damned Internet for information on the lamps used, and finding LED replacements. Things have moved on in the 11 years since this post was up originally, and there are many different types of LEDs now, including point LEDs that give almost 100% coverage, and standard T10/T5 fittings, and replacement housing for them. Problem is, other than the T10/T5 standard lamps behind the dials, the rest seem to be random, even between switches that look similar. I've yet to find an authoritative list of specs for each lamp position. This is compounded by the fact that most threads are old, and the links to various retailers don't work any more!

I've spent most of my time behind the dials, so (iirc) there are 3 T10s, and 11 T5s. Most of the T5s are for the signal lamps (ECT, full beams, oil etc), which aren't coloured by the lamp, but by the dial fascia itself. Also, there is one lamp affecting the low fuel light that won't work with an LED (LEDs need little power to light, and the low fuel light works by variable voltage - with an incandescent lamp it's fine, but with an LED even at a full tank there is enough voltage coming through to turn the damned thing on! I'm sure there would be a way to mitigate this, but it's beyond my ken.)

In the end, given how variable LEDs can be in terms of light distribution, it's difficult to find something that will work perfectly in the dash. Like I said there are lots of different types of LED these days, like cob ones where there are arrays of LEDs around a central shaft, but I found that even those had problems (the light pipes that distribute the light through the dash lined up with the corners of the arrays on a cob, or the point LEDs sat too high or too low to the pipe) so I just went back to normal lamps, but they still need replacing, so I still need the specs heh.

As for the rest, who knows! There is lots of useful information here, but the pictures are now missing, so it's difficult to work out from just the words. I'm not even that fussy about most switches etc, I've been trying to find information on replacing the auto gear stick light and heater controls on my 3rd gen. If anyone is still around who has done this, maybe we can all work together to create a definitive guide with part specs, pictures etc?