has anyone dealt with the lextech lightning mod? i wanted to get the red needle with "32" white back lighting. it's pretty much $300 for that, wasn't sure if that was on par with the quality and value.

has anyone made a simpler/cheaper fix?

my needles are going out on half the needles and just wanted to get the back lighting a bit brigher and cleaner.

thanks for any feedback

 

Whats Lextech???

 

This was one of my very first must-have mods. Worth every penny. I did the regular 16 white led background with red needles and the climate control.

 

^^^interior looks neat man

 

how long did it take for the whole turnaround time?

 

I just got mine done recently. Not happy at all. I got the blue 32's with white needles as well as my climate with white face and blue buttons. I received my cluster with flickering bulbs on numbers 2 and 6 of my rpm gauge and the face of my climate control is not even uniformly colored. The CC is stock green on the left side and blotchy white in the middle and right side. Also I decided to take the cluster apart and to my suprise I only have "24" LEDS in the actual cluster and not the "32" I ordered. I will no longer deal with Lextech even though they offered to look the cluster over. I don't want to waste another 3 week turn around time and wish it had been done right the first time around especially since I deal with quality assurance every day. One of the biggest dissapointments I've had when modding my SC.

 

yikes, well i'm glad i got some feedback (positive and negative) about what i'm about to send off. what was your turn around time? i hope it wasn't 3 weeks!?

anyway, that's terrible that it didn't turn out as good as you hoped.

as far as the "16" bulb package, is it sufficient enough to be significantly brighter/cleaner than stock or do you NEED the "32" for that?

Trangk- the 16 and the white Climate control looks awesome.. is that the brightest the gauges get? not bad at all but was thinking if i were to do it, i would do it allt he way to make a good amount of change... still deciding

anyone ever do it themselves? i know it's not easy to do (i dont think) but almost $300 for LED lights that cost (pretty cheap) seems a bit high (?).

trangk glad you were happy with yours tho

 

I heard you were a pretty disappointing customer, from the other P.O.V.
Your cluster was beaten in shipping, then you blamed Lextech for the damage. It took you a week to ship it to Lextech, over the 4th of july holiday it was repaired, which you never accounted for in timeframe, and when you got it back you stripped it and went looking inside (like you just said you did) of it causing more damage. Then you wrote LLS complaining instead of asking questions, and they responded to you that you had (24) 20,000 MCD led's in there rather than (32) 10,000 MCD led's which made it BRIGHTER than the "32" is.

Never the less you continued complaining about things that were either fed ex damage, your damage, or your inability to do the math on the led's output that was done to your benefit.

Of course I have the advantage of knowing that by speaking directly with Brandon where others do not. The fact still remains after all the trouble Brandon went through to give you double high power led's, you still complained that there were not 32 of them in there even though you were running at nearly double brightness. He did it for you since you were a Cl member and was trying to be nice.

I guess that's what ya get for trying to help.

 

The price on the website, does that include labor and parts? JUst add shipping and return shipping?

 

You can also do it yourself - takes a few hours and $30 or less worth of parts...

maybe $40 if you do indeed install 32 led's for backlighting...

 

Sure anyone can stick an Led in a cluster, but anyone from the old school that has watched the development of the units over the last 5 years knows that sticking an led in the unit looks like crap. I have yet to see one done "shade tree" that didn't have holes in the lighting big enough to drive a truck through.

For example, your gauges you attempted to build shown here with a dim spot on ever other number.

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i1...CIMG1037-1.jpg

and the guy's up there done by LLS:

http://www.thetrangs.net/khang/sc300...s/IMG_1775.jpg

That doesn't take away from the effort you did to build it, but not everyone wants their cluster to look like that.

 

I was the dissapointing customer? All I did was question the actual fact that there were 32 LED's in my cluster. Lextech never informed me there were 24 LED's installed and as you can see in his response to my non-hostile email that was sent. He still says I had 32 LED's installed. I fully wrapped my cluster and climate control at least 3 or more times with bubble wrap and made sure I had plenty of balled up newspaper to prevent the parts from shifting within the package when it was sent out.

I'm not here to argue but when you start blaming me for causing damage to the gauge cluster then of course I'm going to respond and defend myself. I can sit here and say Lextech did a poor job of packaging the product since they were obviously the last ones to touch my cluster before sending it out to me. I was just giving my first hand experience to the original poster. You can defend Lextech all you want because I know you are associated with them. Hell I wished you were the actual person to work on my cluster as I always thought you were the head guy there but you tend to not associate yourself with them when it came down to all the problems people were having with Lextech.

I sent one email regarding my problems with the cluster but I guess that makes me a "complainer" as you put it. I didn't even mention the problems with climate control. I have all the emails exchanged with Lextech, most of which are questions and a request for them to send it to a different address. I can show those to people who would like to read them as well.

Here's an exact copy and paste of the actual email lextech and I exchanged of me "complaining."

Hi there, all the Sc owners we have serviced (we're talking 4000+)
have never experienced that issue with shifting.

It sounds like your cluster has experienced some hard shipping.
There's a 32 grade backlight in there, but if it is malfunctioning
it's obviously not firing correctly. I've only seen it one time
before where a cluster was jolted hard enough to shift the led's
inside and cause issues so I suppose we have a pretty good run of
luck on that, but I suppose someone had to be #2. I'd take it out on
fed ex, but they could care less. I have to have the cluster in my
hands to find out the problem unfortunately, so if you can get it
here, I can have it back out the same day it gets here and it outta
be quick.



On Jun 19, 2007, at 12:40 AM, Alvin wrote:

>
> I just received my cluster today and it looks like you guys gave me
> the 16 blue led background and not the 32 blue that I paid for.
> Also the lights are flickering on the number 2 and number 6 RPM
> sections of the cluster. I understand you guys specialize in custom
> work but I also expected to receive a fully functioning product as
> well as the actual 32 led setup I paid for. Hope you guys can give
> me some insight into this problem. You should also let other auto
> SC300 owners know that the vehicle does not shift past first gear
> when driving without a cluster as I learned the hard way during
> this experience.
>
> Thanks,
> Alvin

 

Sorry bub, I don't see anyone's emails so I can't help ya. I can guess that the email above was from a tech and not brandon who would have known your unit was bumped up in led's because it is only done for Cl members. I just chat often. I believe there were multiple exchanges of emails possibly? Dunno. Not my biz and honestly I don't really care.

All I see is confirmation of what was said earlier in regard to fed ex damage and an offer to fix it which you declined. I see no other way it could have been handled. the company stood behind the product and offered to help and you declined.

Going around complaining about something after you declined to have the company help you would IMO be considered further "complaining"

 

Geez the people with the worse experience always seem to be the most vocal

To the original poster:

1. Turn around time for me was about 1.5-2 weeks including the transit time there and back for the dash cluster.

I think it was around 1 week for the climate control since I had them done at seperate times roughly 6 weeks apart.

2. The 16 cluster is very bright IMO. Would love to see what the 32 one looks like in person since it's hard to judge on the website. You can see them very clearly in the daytime and at night, I actually turn them down a bit. Much nicer than the yellowish stock bulbs.

3. I have open my cluster to fix a broken fuel motor (my fault) and I can say the work is clean. You won't find your cluster a mess with solder/glue/etc. Very professional work.

Again this is just *my* experience with Lextech.

 

I demand an upgrade!