Ok, started my led project, here are some pics

Ok, started my led project, here are some pics (1st UPDATE!!!)

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.

 

Ok, now a review. Superbrightleds.com was very fast and i felt the prices were very reasonable. Obviously they don't make complete kits or have instructions like ledautomotive.com. But i still figured this is the way to go. You just need to be a bit savy with the wiring.

Results. Center is almost perfect. The defrost buttom for the rear window is just very very slightly darker than the rest. The front defrost is a bit dim too but that is because of color. I will put a red led behind that in the future. And i have an easy power source doing it the way i did it.

Gauges. Now these were much better than i would have thought right out of the box, no modification, shaving of leds, etc. It has very minor "hot spots". The main problems are the needles and the red part of the tach. It seem to have a bit of a proble with red. I will fix this but it doesn't bother me. I was suprised how good it was with just replacement bulbs.

 

Holy crap! Thats awesome man, great job, now all we need is a step by step installation guide for everyone who doesn't know how to do this!

 

Ok, i'll continue with some other stuff.

The other thing i did was the dome light and the front lights. These were easy. THe front lights are just 2 194 bulbs. The dome light, well, i bought the wrong size and made it fit. This took me about 5 min total. Very easy, anyone can do this.

Day time comparison.


Looks a bit more bluish purple than it should. THat is what it really looks like though, just not exactly the color i expected.

.

Then night fell.

Color got much better, way more white.

This is about what it looks like in the car, you can see the light is pretty natural.



My review of this. Install, incredibly easy, anyone can do this. Light color is more natural. Way brighter as well. Almost a bit much for me, but i'm sure i'll get used to it. It's not like these are on alot anyway though. I probably should have used a more "focused" led for this as it has a difussuer and needs to point down. But then it would be BRIGHT

 

Sorry for taking up so much space. It seems a few people are a bit confused or don't know what way to go. Overall, i'm very content. I'm glad i went the route of hardwiring so far. I did the same on the cruise control as well, but that is more confusing. I really don't want to go into that. SO far i spent $42. That's one of the reasons i think you should do this yourself if you can solder and are happy working with a multi meter. Now obviously, all the wedge bulbs are easy to just buy. But the cruise control, sunroof, clock, HVAC and window switch are a bit tougher. Sure, a kit is easier. But if you know how to do it, hard wiring is not difficult. If you are smart, you don't have to tap into your factory wiring harness. And you can just unsolder and nobody will ever know. I need two more bulbs for the doors, and 3 more small leds for the window and sunroof. Overall, this will cost me $50 or so. With the kits, you are going to spend a bit more. For me, it wasn't worth it. Plus the cost of replacing all the bulbs when i sell my car or something. It's a small price, but i'm a cheap ***.


Sorry, i'm whoring now.

 

looks goood man. the gauges are slightly blue cuz they have a blueish filter on the back of them. in order to get pure white, youd have to take off the needles, and the gauges face and wipe off the filter (yes, its NOT just a film). one guy on v6p.net did it. but i wouldnt do it cuz of the risk of messing up your gauge readings. i think ill go with white tho, doesnt look bad at all.

 

awesome job! i wanna do this soon.. my blue gauges is dead, so i wanna take tht off and put in the LEDs... i wanna do the white/ red combo, so ur pix gives me a good idea of how it'll look like

basically, it's just pulling out the old bulbs and putting in the LEDs? no need for modifications or shaving? i read on other forums tht u need to do tht

 

Yeah, well, the color is actually a really nice blue. And i knew it would be blue anyway, i just wish it was more white as i wasn't going for blue. But i do like the color. i found the bulbs i used that weren't from superbrightleds.com were a bit lighter. White leds are a bit blue on there own. But i'm content with the color. It's not perfect, but not worth worrying about, or going any further. White is much easier to deal with than blue (like a true blue led). It doesn't have the same look when it comes to "hot spots". Its not 80% blue, 20% whatever stock is.

I've probably said this way too much but i was trying to go with something that could be oem, just nicer than stock. I've done blue on other cars i've owned, it looks great but not really stock. I know there are stock cars with it but it still stands out too much. I've done red on friends cars as well, too bright. And red incendect bulbs do the trick just as well with better light dispersion.

I have to say, i love hondas for things like this. Even the stuff i hard wired was 5x easier than my dsm. It's so much easier to get to the pins. On my dsm, i had to hack into the harness. Everything was so much more cramped.

Anyway, i'm happy, i need to do a bit more work on the guages to get it really clean, especially the needles. I'll post pics of that as i get to it. Other than that, 3 more bulbs that will be very straight forward.

 

Well, i need to do a bit of work, like in the above post. I don't plan to shave them though. I'll make something to disperse light better. Shaving works, but im thinking it's easier to just do something else. Shaving sucks, it's time consuming and doesn't help that much. White is pretty easy though. There are spots in the evening but once it gets dark, they sort of go away. If you look at the needles, you can see that they aren't totally lit. I'm just thinking that i can find a better way than shaving the bulbs.

EDIT-I'm 99% sure that this would look much worse with a different color, as described above.

 

is there any white LED tht is actually 100% white? i like how the 7th gen accord's gauges are... white with red... sure makes me wonder how Honda got the gauges to be tht white