DarkSideAccord
nadeshiko fobz ftw..
thanx for teh help guys
ok i did the led conversion and everything came out fine...except the needles aren't moving flawlessly, it's like they're crippled! it's like when i come to a complete stop, the speedo needle takes like 2 whole seconds to cripple down to 0 mph...i'm sure it's the little motors that the needles pop into.
have this happened to anyone who has taken out their needles? i'm planning on visiting my local honda dealer for new motors...
There is a really bad hot-spot on my hvac and the typical dim red button is a pain. I also really screwed up the knobs. I used fingernail polish remover instead of just alcohol and ripped off the numbers for the fan speed Oh well...
Well, i got my led's today, i'm actually almost done. So i went with white. Now, it doesn't really come out white. It's a really pale blue. I wanted white, which kind of sucked, but i knew white leds almost always have a blue tint to them. I wish it was more white, but i didn't want a real viberant blue or red, yellow, etc, so concidering the choices, it's probably still the best for me.
Ok, the guage cluster. Now this is very straight forward. You need 3 "194 wedge bulbs," the more dispersion, the better. You will also need 2 "74 wedge bulbs," Which are hard to find with good dispertion, but they light up small areas, normal ones are fine. Add another 74 bulb for the odometer. I got these all from superbrightleds.com
So-Guage cluster
3-194 bulbs
3-74 bulbs.
Pic:
I left the coolant temp gauge stock for comparison.
Ok, lets move on the the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), or the center part. This was a bit more challenging. I did not want to modify my bulbs. So i found that pin 11 on the harness for the lighting was ground 22 was power. Use a mulitmenter to verify this if you do it this way.
SKIP THIS PART IF YOU GET A KIT FROM LEDAUTOMOTIVE OR PLAN TO MODIFY THE STOCK BULB....
Well, for some reason, i'm dumb and i bought 74 wedge bulbs for this. Now these obviously won't work. But they didn't really cost more, plus had the resistors on them. I'd rather have just bought led's and resistors but i figured i'd salvage these. So this part may be confusing. I took the bulbs (carefully) out of the wedge holder. I took the HVAC pannel apart. I found the positive (which is harder to find as it was pre soldered). Then i wired the four positives for each bulb to a jumper wire off pin 22. Then the ground to pin 11. I just glue gunned the bulbs in place for easy removal. Worked perfectly.
Pic:
Now one of the other advantages other than saving the stock bulbs is that you can easily add leds from the source you found. THe defrost button is a bit dim. So i'll just add red or orange led there and have an easy power source. I could even add an led for each botton if i wanted to, but i'd wire in series if i did it this way.
Now the clock i did similar to the HVAC pannel. I did not use the original bulb. I used a 3mm led and resistor. I was able to solder it directly to the contacts, pretty easy. It's weird because i have never had this actually work. And it is there to stay.
Ok, for those who got lost and plan to use a kit, you are welcome to return without so much confusion
So after i got everything put back, looks like this:
Now, a terrible pic but this is the best representation of color
EDIT-I left something stock in every pic to compare.
I looked on the site and I can't find the bulbs you refer to for the gauge cluster. Can you specify the exact item number. I don't want to buy the wrong thing.
On this page- http://www.superbrightleds.com/mini-wedge.html
I used:
WLED-x5 LED Wedge Base Bulbs
B8.5D Twist Lock lamp (I believe, the site has changed a bit).