Gauge Cluster Teardown and Rebuild - Beware, Pic Heavy!

[84k20]

I painted mins chrome when I redid my cluster a couple months ago but then again I also added LEDs removing the older stock bulbs. Made a huge difference after the paint though the light reflected much more
Before

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When I tried just white

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And finished product

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Very bright at night

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[Green79Scottsdale]

Thanks for the pics 84k20! I like the nice white you are getting.

I don't know if I ever fully explained my mission with the lighting. I am not going for all out full on brightest I can get it. Reason is, I NEVER run the lighting at full on in my newer vehicles. For me it is too bright and distracting. I can still see everything just fine with them at half power. I want the trucks lights to be bright enough to where I might need to turn them down, but not so bright that I can't turn them down far enough. Make sense?

Last time I drove the truck at night I was wishing for just a little more light, but nothing to justify a huge change. I would go LED in a heart beat, but I am not sure if I can dim them to my liking. I really wish one of you guys that has done it with LED's lived close enough so I could experience them first hand to make my decision easier.

 

[84k20]

Thanks for the pics 84k20! I like the nice white you are getting.

I don't know if I ever fully explained my mission with the lighting. I am not going for all out full on brightest I can get it. Reason is, I NEVER run the lighting at full on in my newer vehicles. For me it is too bright and distracting. I can still see everything just fine with them at half power. I want the trucks lights to be bright enough to where I might need to turn them down, but not so bright that I can't turn them down far enough. Make sense?

Last time I drove the truck at night I was wishing for just a little more light, but nothing to justify a huge change. I would go LED in a heart beat, but I am not sure if I can dim them to my liking. I really wish one of you guys that has done it with LED's lived close enough so I could experience them first hand to make my decision easier.

Well I can tell you this in my experience the LEDs are bright enough to see clearly but not too distracting one drawback however is most LEDs available make your factory dimmer basically not work anymore it's either dash lights on or off. There was a company that claimed to have LEDs that will work with the dimmer switch but I never wanted to pay 20$ a bulb! Haha

 

[Green79Scottsdale]

And that's the problem I have going to LED's. Most are not dimmable. And the ones that are either don't dim enough, I have heard only 25% of incandescents, or they are crazy expensive. I do want to try LED's on the outside of my truck however. There I want them bright!

 

[HotRodPC]

Not sure how I missed this one. Great Info with pic detail.

Just gave Reps to the participants. Everyone else should too.

Stuck the thread and going to add Meta Tags so it's better found in search engines. These are the types of threads we like and what builds the site and increases membership.

I actually went thru all of this a couple months ago when working on my Temp Gauge in the 85 K1500. I did take mega pics and planned on putting something like this together ,but life happens. Hopefully soon I can have some more valuable input and pics to add to this thread on a later model cluster.

Great Job G79S Bob !!!

 

[84k20]

Believe the site I ordered from was superbrightleds.com may seem like a cheapo site but they were very promt with their shipping and pricing seemed reasonable to me, I know they have all types of bulbs there for sale exterior and interior

On a side note I didn't install LEDs in my whole dash only a few for background lighting and left the others incandescent so it works perfect in my situation although others may have their personal preferences here's where the LEDs are

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[89Suburban]

So installing only partial LEDs did that keep the dimmer function in working order?

 

[84k20]

So installing only partial LEDs did that keep the dimmer function in working order?

The dimmer works but doesn't affect where the LED bulbs are installed because I personally did not buy the dim-able LEDs that they sell because of their ridiculously high price the incandescents used for all other bulb sockets however do dim with the dimmer switch

 

[towjoe]

I never realized they made LED lights to replace the dash lights and that replacing with LED would make them no longer dim. My dashes are so old and gloomy that it's hard to see them at night so the parshal LED swap might be the key.

On a side note, I have never took apart any of the other gages, just the speedometer. I was resetting it to zero for a truck I had rebuilt just for finishing touch. If you have the odometer wheel out, it's a real trick to change the numbers. I had to move them one at a time while playing with the wheel locks on them. It's real touchy job, and I'd suggest setting at 99,995 and slowly rolling it the rest of way so that all the wheels and locks alighn and you know there working correct

 

[84k20]

Tow joe yeah the partial LEDs worked great for me nice and easy to see at night but not blaring and distracting either cheap improvement too at less than 5$ a bulb

 

[Green79Scottsdale]

Not sure how I missed this one. Great Info with pic detail.

Just gave Reps to the participants. Everyone else should too.

Stuck the thread and going to add Meta Tags so it's better found in search engines. These are the types of threads we like and what builds the site and increases membership.

I actually went thru all of this a couple months ago when working on my Temp Gauge in the 85 K1500. I did take mega pics and planned on putting something like this together ,but life happens. Hopefully soon I can have some more valuable input and pics to add to this thread on a later model cluster.

Great Job G79S Bob !!!

Thanks HRPC! And all you others too! I am quite humbled actually that this is getting stickied and whatever else you are doing with it.

I would like to reiterate that I started this thread with work on my cluster, but I don't feel this needs to stay "my" thread. If you have pics and info that is pertinent to this subject, POST IT! You will not be "hijacking" this thread in anyway at all! The more info we can pack in here the better.

If you have stuff about the later clusters that would be awesome. HRPC feel free to post your stuff here if you want. If you want to start a new thread that will be fine too, just please post a link in this thread to the new one.

Thanks 84K20 for the pics. It is a big help!

 

[84k20]

I always wanted to see pics when I was thinking about doing this upgrade so I figured someone out there will appreciate it haha everything is better with pictures

 

[towjoe]

yea it's a pretty simple upgrade, but the pictures show that it's well worth doing it. I've had alot of them apart, but that was before I found this fourm.

on another note, does anyone know what we can use to clean the clear plastic front cover? I tryed several diferent things and even good glass cleaner smudged it bad.

 

[84k20]

yea it's a pretty simple upgrade, but the pictures show that it's well worth doing it. I've had alot of them apart, but that was before I found this fourm.

on another note, does anyone know what we can use to clean the clear plastic front cover? I tryed several diferent things and even good glass cleaner smudged it bad.

I used rubbing alcohol and cotton balls for the first clean then for those stubborn streaks of grime and dirt used a green scrubbie pad and some more rubbing alcohol cleaned mine up and looked like new again careful not to scrub to hard tho you will scratch it.

 

[sonicbluezx3]

I did a tear down of mine last year. I used the LED lights from superbrightleds.com and while they don't dim, they aren't so bright that they are blinding.

I used satin silver to paint the inside of the reflective housing and it works perfect. One of these days I'll get the rest of my pictures up.

How's the project coming along?