I was playing around with needles here and I thought it would be kind of cool to be able to change the color of the backlighting depending on mood. Anyway, this is a test, but I think it looks promising.

EDIT: To see the the final product, skip to this post.

 

Very cool! Can you make the needles do that?

 

It was really easy . This was supposed to be a simple repair for my Daughter's SC4 - but I think I need it in my SC3 too

Here's the details on how to do it - and I take no responsibility for any damage you do to yourself, your car, or your home or pets or anything...

Get yourself some of this stuff on ebay. You don't need as much I bought. In the pics, there is a total of 21 LED's. The flexible strip can be cut every 3 LED's. On the speedo side, I used 4 sections (12 LED's) and on the tach side I used 3 sections (9 LED's) EDIT: USE 4 SECTIONS ON BOTH SIDES

For wiring, I used some old CAT5 patch cable I had laying around. It has 4 pairs of wires, 3 of which correlate to the color of the cathode (negative) terminal of the RGB LED. I used the green\white wire for the common anode (positive) feed.

Remove your existing backlight bulbs and use one of the holes on each side to feed the CAT5 in. Seal up the holes with the empty sockets.

Now get yourself one of these controllers on ebay and hook it up to switched power for input and then connect the CAT5 wires to the controller.

So the whole thing will be around $25 and you'll have extra LED's to stick on other stuff.

 

I'm not sure. It would be MUCH MUCH more difficult. That would be awesome though! I'm still working on the original needle repair that brought this idea on - and it's just red.

 

This was on my to-do list. I'm glad someone did it before me... now I am more motivated to get on with it. Good job.

 

I like it..

 

This is a really cool mod! It's nice to have the choice to switch the color of your gauge cluster for a change. Those LED strips are nice because they are bright and don't seem to show any hot spots. Nice job!

 

Funny thing is, I already bought the flexible strip on a whim, and haven't figured out what to do with it. Now I know!

Thanks for posting this idea.

 

This is awesome. I was getting tired of looking at old lights that starting to go out.

 

Nice job! Just get the needles sorted out for the whole package.

 

Yeah... those are not as easy! I'm sure for the time invested so far, it would have been a better choice to go Lextech, but I like to do stuff myself.

 

Wow, this stuff has really come down in price...

Here is everything you need for under $10. Assuming you have time, soldering stuff, and some old CAT5 cable.

FYI, I bought these a couple years ago for lighting under my kitchen cabinets and pimping out my handicap scooter. They are both still working fine.

I noticed they have controllers with 2 outputs so you could make the left and right sides different colors if you're feeling really wacky. I just ordered a couple more controllers, so when they get here from China in 3 weeks, I'll update with video of the final result. For now, it's going in hard wired as one color so my daughter can drive her car.

 

cool nice mod and a diy !

 

I have to mention, for all the talk about the horrendous hot spots people get putting LEDs in for backlight of the cluster. I put some blue three LED bulbs in off ebay to match the rest of my interior, which is all blue, and I can not see any hot spots.

If you try really, really hard, you might see a slight dimming at the 12 O'clock position of my tach, but its not noticeable unless you are specifically looking for it.

 

You mean like this thread I made about 3 years ago?