Bright white gen3 camry instrument gauge cluster w/pics

[gen3guy]

Hello,

This is my first post. Just a little background, I basically wanted to make my gauge cluster white like the optitron clusters used by lexus and new acuras. I also wanted to spend less than $20 and I wanted a uniformly lit display that really was very white and very bright. I know there are LED bulbs out there, but i thought they were a bit pricey and i thought the light might be patchy since there are based on leds. So basically I used 16 super white 5mm 8000mcd leds (from lsdiodes.com) with resistors and placed them all around the gauge area in the cluster in my gen3 1995 camry. It took a couple hours and cost less than $20.

It was kind of complicated and much messier than I had planned on, but the result is amazing. My cluster now looks just as bright and white as optitron lexus clusters, if not brighter. The lighting is almost uniform except for a couple of areas (12 in 120mph and 14 in 140mph - these were hard to light because the speedo has mechanical pieces right in those areas.)

I have included a link to pics including pics of a lexus rx300 cluster for comparison (same camera and ambient lighting situation) and pic of my green climate controls/ignition ring so you can see how green the old cluster really was compared to the new white one). Some of the pics exaggerate colors, but you can get the idea.

Thanks to everyone here for the posts on how to get everything apart and how to clear the airbag light that i triggered too!

BTW - sorry for the crappy pics, I have a really crappy camera:

http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg687h/camry.htm

[dna59]

Damn that looks really good. Nice job.

[Knailgun]

nice..you must be blind after a night drive.....looks good

[DAMON]

excellent first post looks hot!

[atobe]

looks cool

[coolchu001]

nice job and welcome to TN!

[Peacemaker]

Holy shit! Look awsome! You'll feel lexus experience then, keep up working..

[Bunthy]

damn that looks really good! I have them reverse gauges in my avalon but these looks really nice! Could you send me specfic instruction on how you did this? I'm really interested in doing this. How come you did go with the 12000mcd?

[gen3guy]

Firstly, I did not go with the 12000 mcd LEDs because they have a different white color. The color of the 12000mcd is less bluish-white and more yellow-white. The 6k mcd and 8k mcd have the same whitish-blue color, which looks much much better (and seems nearly as bright as the 12000 mcd).

The procedure was somewhat complicated, with a bit of trial and error. Basically, you first need to figure out the polarity of the each (or one) of the lights in the back of the dash (there are 6 bulbs total). IF you note the polarity of all 6 light sockets you can connect your leds to get power from the nearest bulb socket. If you only find polarity for one, it would be safe to wire all your leds from that one socket. To find the polarity i used a multimeter. If you want, i might have a diagram laying around when i first did this that i can post.

After this, take your guages out of the cluster and look where the guages sit in, make a mental note so you know where to put the leds so they dont get in the way of the mechanical pieces of the guages in the cluster.

Then connect all of your leds to a resistor ( i used 390 ohm) so that each led has its own resistor and then wire the leds in parallel so that each resistor/led pair gets 12v. The light bulb sockets are 12v. How and where to give each led power is up to you. I wired and soldered the led/resistor pair to the nearest bulb socket, connecting 1 pair to another pair of led/resistor.

I used hot-glue to seat everything down to the white plastic instrument cluster base. There is probably a better way to do this, but I had limited supplies to work with

Finally, connect a test voltage source (12v or less) to any one of your led/resistor pairs, and all leds should light up (since they are all in parallel - see tutorials on lsdiodes.com)

Place the guages into the cluster (dont screw back down yet), make sure they fit, turn off the lights in the room and see if the lighting looks right (no hot spots or dark spots - some may be unavoidable). Adjust as necessary and put everything back together.

Thats it. It sounds kind of complicated becuase it actually is. It helps to have a working knowledge of basic electricity/electronics and some creativity (and patience!). It can be easy to mess up the led polarity and takes time to trace everything to figure out what is wrong. I hope i gave a basic idea of how to do it. I recommend doing this only if you think you have the time, patience, and basic knowledge to do it.

Let me know of any other questions.

[N Somniac]

u could have gotten the Hyper White 194 replacement bulb (blue bulb but is bright @$$ white) But still a sick install!!! I was going to do the same with UV LEDs, but sold out and threw in reverse glow gauges, I did find 194 LED color changing bulbs, when they come in (mail) I'll take some pics (maybe record them in either Quicktime or just make a GIF to give an idea, I have no clue what they are going to look like, or if I'll even like them, but I'll be the test subject for everyone