Gauge led bulbs

Doug,

I've tried half-a-dozen different LED bulbs in stock gauges and, unfortunately, the best ones I've tried (Autolumination.com – item #: 194 168 W5W 2825 SMT Tower – green) are NLA.

SuperbrightLEDs.com makes one that works very well (WLED-GHP5); however, they have an "old" version and a "new" version of this bulb. The "old" version needed some minor filing in order to fit into the bulb tubes on the back of our gauges. They are noticeably brighter than 5W incandescent bulbs. Green, 360 degree LED bulbs give our gauges a slightly greener, "crisper" look than incandescent bulbs. White LEDs make the gauges look "washed out" and very pale green because the white light they emit is too blue (IMO). The "new" version of this bulb (photo below) looks smaller than the "old" one, so it will probably fit without modification, but I haven't tried it.

So far, SuperbrightLEDs doesn't have any dimensional specs available for the "new" bulb, so the only way to find out if it works is to try it. Just make sure you get the "new" version. SuperbrightLEDs will take them back if they don't fit.

The key features to look for in an LED bulb for OE Pantera gauges are: 360 degree light output and green illumination. Also, the bulb needs to protrude far enough into the gauge that the radial mounted LEDs, on a 360 degree beam pattern bulb, are inside the gauge and not in the bulb tube. Most of the LED bulb companies have bulbs like this but most are too large in diameter to fit into the bulb holder tubes on the back of OE Pantera gauges.

If you use an LED bulb with a narrower beam pattern than 360 degrees, the illumination will be uneven over the face of the gauge.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the help and info David. Appreciated.
In my case I converted to VDO gauges with white markings and installed the matching face plates on the tach and speedo.

White would be the way to go for me with this set up.

Just an't find the right application to find the bulb number yet.

My original Veglia's are stored safely away.

The original bulbs are making these gauges look yellow. Very strange.

quote:

Originally posted by David_Nunn:
Doug,

I've tried half-a-dozen different LED bulbs in stock gauges and, unfortunately, the best ones I've tried (Autolumination.com – item #: 194 168 W5W 2825 SMT Tower – green) are NLA.

SuperbrightLEDs.com makes one that works very well (WLED-GHP5); however, they have an "old" version and a "new" version of this bulb. The "old" version needed some minor filing in order to fit into the bulb tubes on the back of our gauges. They are noticeably brighter than 5W incandescent bulbs. Green, 360 degree LED bulbs give our gauges a slightly greener, "crisper" look than incandescent bulbs. White LEDs make the gauges look very "washed out" and very pale green. The "new" version of this bulb (photo below) looks smaller than the "old" one, so it will probably fit without modification, but I haven't tried it.

So far, SuperbrightLEDs doesn't have any dimensional specs available for the "new" bulb, so the only way to find out if it works is to try it. Just make sure you get the "new" version. SuperbrightLEDs will take them back if they don't fit.

The key features to look for in an LED bulb for OE Pantera gauges are: 360 degree light output and green illumination. Also, the bulb needs to protrude far enough into the gauge that the radial mounted LEDs, on a 360 degree beam pattern bulb, are inside the gauge and not in the bulb tube. Most of the LED bulb companies have bulbs like this but most are too large in diameter to fit into the bulb holder tubes on the back of OE Pantera gauges.

If you use an LED bulb with a narrower beam pattern than 360 degrees, the illumination will be uneven over the face of the gauge.

I hope this helps!

Do you have any photos of how it looks with these LED?

Is the same lamp in all the gauges speed, rpm and them small?
How many lamp is it?

Each gauge has one light bulb. So you need six if you have the stock gauge configuration.

Anders,

In the photo below, the voltmeter and clock have LED bulbs, the other two gauges have 3W incandescent bulbs.

Like Doug wrote, there are six gauge illumination bulbs. There are also seven warning light bulbs; three each in the tach and speedo, and one in the fuel gauge. If you want to replace these with LEDs as well, make sure the color of the LED bulb is the same as the lens that it will shine through. As an example, you would use a red bulb for the low fuel warning light. This LED bulb works well for the warning lights: SuperbrightLEDs.com WLED-xHP.

Wow! You sure need to like green! What a difference.

Good thought on the factory warning lights in the speedo and tach. Didn't think of that.

Lighting is one way to bring the car into this century. LED's can help.

Here are some pictures that may interest you. I found some LED replacement bulbs on ebay from a supplier named allpartspipe. I want to reduce the heat of the bulb inside the gauge. With the incandescent, they get so warm that it causes condensation inside the glass, and my gauges would fog up (the small ones, not the tach and speedo).
Just to see the difference, I set up my gauges on the bench and used a bench power supply set at 13.2 volts. These photos are time exposures taken with the same camera, settings, and conditions. First the incandescents:

Then green LEDs in the next picture:

You can see that the incandescent bulbs are brighter than these LEDs, which are inexpensive ones. I am sure there are better ones available, so I am interested to see what others find.

What I notice is the difference between the gauges. The volt meter is the brightest, followed by water temp, oil pressure, fuel level, and amp meter is the most dim. My clock was out so not visible, but I see in David's pic that it is pretty bright.

My question is how to make them more even in brightness. If I have plenty of light, I can simply add a resistor to the brightest ones. But if the light is weak at best, I need to take the gauges apart and improve the light delivery inside.

One picture at a time - here are the green LEDs:

And here is the test set up in day light:

UFO-LOW,

I had exactly the problem you mention, when I tried LED bulbs with a 270 degree beam pattern. Some gauges were brighter than others and some were bright on one side only. When using bulbs with a 360 degree beam pattern, I think you'll find this problem goes away (just like with incandescent bulbs). Your voltmeter is the exception, as it must have different internal construction, that lets more light through to the front of the gauge.

quote:

Originally posted by UFO-LOW:
Here are some pictures that may interest you. I found some LED replacement bulbs on ebay from a supplier named allpartspipe. I want to reduce the heat of the bulb inside the gauge. With the incandescent, they get so warm that it causes condensation inside the glass, and my gauges would fog up (the small ones, not the tach and speedo).
Just to see the difference, I set up my gauges on the bench and used a bench power supply set at 13.2 volts. These photos are time exposures taken with the same camera, settings, and conditions. First the incandescents:

Then green LEDs in the next picture:

You can see that the incandescent bulbs are brighter than these LEDs, which are inexpensive ones. I am sure there are better ones available, so I am interested to see what others find.

What I notice is the difference between the gauges. The volt meter is the brightest, followed by water temp, oil pressure, fuel level, and amp meter is the most dim. My clock was out so not visible, but I see in David's pic that it is pretty bright.

My question is how to make them more even in brightness. If I have plenty of light, I can simply add a resistor to the brightest ones. But if the light is weak at best, I need to take the gauges apart and improve the light delivery inside.

What do the bulbs themselves look like. Are they plug in substitutions for the stock incandescent and their holders?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/...e-view_1397496082016

This is the one I'm going to try. There was another thread on LEDs a while ago and these worked well

Wow that was a big difference, I have bright days around the clock where I live. Except late fall and when I went home late from a DT friends, I discovered that I can't see nothing of the gages. It was the most speedo I checked the time I didn't want to drive too fast if something came up on the road.
I have to check up this with LED...

that bulb is plug and play and it is bright!!

I replaced my gauge bulbs with the 360° LED's with the white plastic bases. They are a snug fit and could use a little filing. On the speedo and tach I ordered the style with an additional row of LED's. This really helped illuminate the larger gauges. I may have had to trim the bases, it's been a while since I did it. One thing to note is that they do not dim with the existing dimmer. I have plans to retrofit a LED dimmer but have not tried it yet. This is the style I used for the speedo/tach and the smaller gauges got the single row version. I used white and think I will change to green because the the white does change the color of the gauges quite a bit.

Steve

Are they all this expensive?

Steve,

After installing LED bulbs in all of my gauges and improving the gauge illumination so dramatically, I found I really needed a functional dimmer (since the OEM dimmer won't work with LED bulbs). After trying a bunch of different dimmers, I found one that worked perfectly. I wrote an article for the March '14 POCA newsletter, describing the installation. Here it is:

http://tinyurl.com/kuulbhy

quote:

Originally posted by David_Nunn:
Steve,

After installing LED bulbs in all of my gauges and improving the gauge illumination so dramatically, I found I really needed a functional dimmer (since the OEM dimmer won't work with LED bulbs). After trying a bunch of different dimmers, I found one that worked perfectly. I wrote an article for the March '14 POCA newsletter, describing the installation. Here it is:

http://tinyurl.com/kuulbhy

Thanks David,

Okay, Is his new version available to purchase? I looked at the website and it doesn't specify. That is exactly what I need to do to my car along with swapping out the white LED's for green. If anyone is wondering if it is worth the trouble, IT IS! That and one of the quad headlight kits from the vendors makes the car drivable at night.

Steve

Steve,

As far as I know, the three wire dimmer kit is not yet available. I'll send Dale Wheat an e-mail to see if he has an ETA. I'll let you know what he says. The only downside to the four wire version is, you have to convert to dual contact bulb holders, so that all the LEDs can ground through the dimmer.

Speaking of quad headlamp kits, I see Hella's now selling 90mm LED low beam and High/Low beam modules. Apparently, they are better than the 90mm Xenon and much better than the 90mm Halogen. The price, however, is about $780 each. Ouch! I'll stick with my halogen modules until the price comes down.

There are lots of dimmer options that should work that don't involve building a kit and cost less. Here's an example:
http://www.amazon.com/LEDwhole...oller/dp/B003L4KKF2/
It's only $7 amazon prime. You can see from the photos there that it would be easy to remotely mount the pot that controls the intensity. You could probably ditch the box if you wanted. It's good for 8 amps, more than enough! You can get what appears to be the same thing from hong kong for about 1/2 the price. Search on amazon and ebay or google for 12 volt LED dimmer (or PWM dimmer) you'll get lots of other options but I don't think you'll find anything functionally better for less $$.

As for the LEDs you can get them for 10x for $10.44 + $.99 shipping.
Here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/10X-16...ts-SGW-/171155479776
They appear to be identical to the WLED-xHP5 from Superbrightleds.com http://www.superbrightleds.com...ngle-wedge-base/206/)
It took a few minutes of searching in ebay for 5 SMD 194 168 LED green to find them.
If you search for t 10 w 5 w 194 5 SMD Green Car LED can bus (as ebay later suggested) you'll get a number of similar options. Actually the ones that look like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/T10-50...p-Bulb-/371000728873
appear to be the same if you pull off the plastic case. They are a lot more common.

Richard,

RE: Amazon dimmer: Not all LED dimmers are created equal. I tried this exact unit (from eBay) after I'd given up on the Autometer LED dimmer. Trust me, I didn't set out to build a dimmer from scratch! Although this one seemed to be OK with lots of high power LEDs, the dimmer motion wasn't as linear and progressive as I was looking for (just like the Autometer dimmer), so I kept looking.

I just ordered one of these Protizmo units and connector. The total was $42.00. I'll let you know how it works out but I think it is promising. They state that it is compatible with common ground and the original rheostat. You connect the original rheostat wires to the unit, connect 2 more wires from the unit to the rheostat, and add a ground. It is tunable to work with rheostats/potentiometers in the range of 4 Ohm to 10k Ohm.

Steve

Steve,

The Protizmo unit looks perfect for a Pantera application. I sure wish I'd found that eight months ago!

Let us know how it works.

I received my new Protizmo PWM dimmer a couple days after ordering it. I also ordered new green LEDs to replace my white ones. I crawled under the dash last night and put an Ohm meter on my rheostat to verify its range. The range was unstable with a minimum that flucuated between 1.5 Ohms and 2.5 Ohms. The maximum also fluctuated some with a maximum of 5.9 Ohms. The motion between minimum and maximum was not linear. I have decided to replace it with a good linear potentiometer. The Protizmo can be reprogrammed to work with any potentiometer up to 10K Ohm so I'll stop by the electronics store and see what I can come up with. I hope to have more to report by the end of the weekend.

Steve

Steve,

It's my understanding the OEM rheostat is 5 Ohms.

How difficult is it to reprogram the dimmer to use a different value of rheostat or potentiometer? Do you just re-calibrate it or does the program need to be re-flashed. Since it comes pre-programmed (or pre-calibrated) for a Porsche 6 Ohm rheostat, you could always simply buy a 6 Ohm rheostat from someone like Digikey, although they're not cheap ($33). This one would work fine:

http://www.digikey.com/product...0E/RHS6R0E-ND/824070

If you'd rather use a potentiometer, as they're typically less expensive than a rheostat, the biggest challenge is finding one that fits nicely in the hole in the dash left by the OEM rheostat. I've used this one and it's great but you'd have to reprogram the dimmer because you'll never find an off-the-shelf 6 Ohm pot:

http://www.digikey.com/product...3/A105861-ND/2364186

Digikey sells lots of knobs that would work with either a rheostat or a potentiometer but the anodized billet ones made by Kilo International are particularly nice (cheap too!):

http://www.digikey.com/product...=0&fid=0&pageSize=25

I'm really looking forward to hearing how this works out!

Here is the Protizmo instruction sheet.

.

Download version

I purchased a 1Kohm potentiometer and followed the instructions above. I did have to make a new bezel to work with the smaller mounting of the potentiometer. The calibration (Training) process is simple enough but it did take me a few trys to get it to work, I found that I wasn't moving the knob fast enough at first. Also you need to have a very slight pause at each stop point just as the instruction state. All in all it works great. The fade goes from full on to full off in a very linear fashion. My only complaint is the blue LED on the unit is very very bright. I have not finalized the installation yet but am concerened that it will illuminate the foot well if I mount the unit under the dash just above the original rheostat location. I am going to contact Protizmo and inquire about removing the blue LED or soldering in a tiny switch to turn it off.

Here is a shot of my dash with white LEDs at full brightness. The amp gauge looks brighter in the picture but not in person, I think it might have been the camera angle or something. I tried green LEDs but they were not as bright, maybe I will try a different manufacture. I do like the white and they make the needles really standout.

Steve

You guys are assuming the stock rheostat is working as it should. It may well not be; quite a few have failed utterly and it seems reasonable that others are not fully functional. Inside the Rheostat is a curved wound-wire potentiometer and a thin copper strip that has a ball bearing running on it to make contact without wear. The key issue is, ALL electrical power goes through a 1/2" long hair-fine wire that often breaks from old age.

And you don't even need to disassemble the thing like I did. On the back of the stock rheostat are a pair of stubs that if bridged, will parallel the feed thru that hair-wire inside and restore full function. With a BIG soldering iron, I soldered a 12-ga. bridge-wire across those visible stubs and my non-functional rheostat now works fine. If a VOM shows less than 5 ohms- or open- thru your rheostat (or maybe even if it does show correct resistance) I suggest bridging those contacts before trying other add-ons.

Here is the response I receive back from Protizmo:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Howdy, Steve.

I’d suggest one of these options:

1. Just orient the AILD-1 such that the projected light cone from the LED is aimed where it won’t be noticeable.
2. Tape over the LED. Black electric tape to eliminate the blue light completely. Opaque tape if you just want to dim it down a bit.
3. A switch would be fine. You could disconnect one of the leads to R1 (the resistor to the right of the blud LED (LED1) and put the switch in series with that resistor.
4. If you just want to disable the blue LED, but still re-enable it without too much difficulty, you could just clip the exposed lead on R1 (or de-solder one of its leads). To re-enable it, you could just re-solder the lead.
5. If you just want the blue LED dimmer than it currently is, you could replace resistor R1 with a resistor with a higher resistance value. I’m away from where I can to my design documents right now, but I could recommend some alternative values is you’re interested in pursuing this option.

Option 2 is crude, but effective and expedient.  I’d choose option 1 or 2 on my own car if the blue light were objectionable (and it isn’t; on my ’90 Porsche 928S4, it’s not even noticeable given the mounting location near the steering column close to where the RDK control unit used to be before I removed it).

If you do modify the circuitry at all, I’d recommend leaving a label on the unit somewhere so that there’s a record of the modification. You (or a future owner) would probably appreciate that later.


Hope that helps. Don’t hesitate to contact me with further questions or comments.

--
Ed Scherer
Protizmo, LLC"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My plan is to open up the unit and check the resistor value as stated in option 5. I have a decade box that will allow me to change the resistance and determine what is best for me. If I wasn't so anal simply taping over it would work too!

Steve

quote:

Originally posted by Bosswrench:
You guys are assuming the stock rheostat is working as it should. It may well not be; quite a few have failed utterly and it seems reasonable that others are not fully functional. Inside the Rheostat is a curved wound-wire potentiometer and a thin copper strip that has a ball bearing running on it to make contact without wear. The key issue is, ALL electrical power goes through a 1/2" long hair-fine wire that often breaks from old age.

And you don't even need to disassemble the thing like I did. On the back of the stock rheostat are a pair of stubs that if bridged, will parallel the feed thru that hair-wire inside and restore full function. With a BIG soldering iron, I soldered a 12-ga. bridge-wire across those visible stubs and my non-functional rheostat now works fine. If a VOM shows less than 5 ohms- or open- thru your rheostat (or maybe even if it does show correct resistance) I suggest bridging those contacts before trying other add-ons.

Boss,

I took my rheostat completely apart and cleaned it. The issue is that it is not linear and repeatable enough in my opinion to do what is required to operate the Protizmo unit. Rotating the knob connected to my Fluke 87III VOM showed the resistance to bounce around rather than be a smooth transition from 5.X to 1.X Ohms. Now that said, It worked just fine to dimm the incandescent bulbs.

Steve

I un-soldered R1 to test the LED brightness by verying the resistance. The resistance of R1 is 800 Ohms. I tested all the way up to 40K Ohms which did dimm the blue LED quite a bit. I ended up deciding to leave R1 disconnected due to my mounting location. Any illumination would be noticable in the foot well. I put a little electrical tape over R1 and called it good. If I ever need to I can simply resolder it. If I did it again I would just clip R1 in the middle of the long side. That would still allow it to be repaired in the future if necessary and would be easier than un-soldering it from the board.

Here's a shot of the final mounting looking up from the pedals. You can see it fits nicely and is hidden from view. Now you can see why I disconnected the blue LED.

The original rheostat wires are the orange and yellow/black. The black wire is the new ground that goes right up to the grounding stud that is above and to the right although it can't be seen in this picture. The green and white wires are connectd to the potentiometer.

You can also see the new knob, purchased from the electronics shop with the potentiometer, and the bezel I made.

New knob and bezel.