LubedKoala

I'm sorry, I was actually referring to the tachometer and speed gauge and all that when i said dash. I'll take dash apart soon and figure out what bulbs to replace, but man I would love to have the tachometer and speed look like those in the civics. It's all digital white and blue.

inactiveuser1114

awsome, so we would need all 3 types? A B & C?
i would think only A (8mm) & B (10mm)

this what your referring to, right?
Type A

BTW that first site was hilarious 19.99 for EACH bulb!

TraviS2000

You won't get the tach/speedo part blue without some serious work.

The back lighting for it is 5 - 8 (forgot exact number) white incandescent bulbs. Then in front of it is a plastic filter that has clear red & orange on it.

I replaced the incandescent bulbs with equivalent white LED bulbs...which had multiple LED's for each socket. They were a lot brighter than the original ones. Then I replaced the red/orange plastic piece with a blue filter I got from a theater store (they use them in their can lights to get different color lighting). It works, but it's splotchy and since a blue filter will filter out more light than a red/orange filter, the result is also less bright than stock. The stock red/orange filter gets around the splotchyness by having white dots painted on the back of the filter. So, there are larger white dots right in front of the bulb area and smaller white dots further away from the bulbs. This has an effect of evening out the light coming through so you can't tell it's coming from multiple point sources. I had no way of duplicating this on the blue filter...and even if I did, it would make the whole think look like the dimmest part away from the bulb...which wouldn't look very bright.

I'm driving around with the blue filter now...and it's OK but not great. I can see it okay most of the time but not very easily when it's bright, top down, and wearing sun glasses. At night it looks beautiful (if you ignore the spottyness, which other people don't even notice but it bothers me.)



See the dots in the dash? I'm not happy with it. My next plan is to hack up an old LCD screen and use it...

EDITED: NOTE: I believe the camera had a high ISO setting at the time making it look a little brighter than it actually is...

inactiveuser1114

[QUOTE=TraviS2000,May 13 2008, 04:19 PM]
EDITED:

inactiveuser1114

is there a how to in taking the dash apart?

TraviS2000

Yeah, it's not that bright. I'll go take another picture tonight with some normal ISO settings to give you a better idea of what it will do.

I only used the multiple LED's per socket for the area behind the speedo. I don't think you could make them fit anywhere else even if you wanted to.

I'm not sure if there is a how to on removing the dash pieces. I think I found some tips on a search.

I know I dropped the steering column by undoing two 10 or 12 mm bolts half way down the steering column towards the engine bay.

I know there are two tabs above the tach area that pull out to reveal two screws that half to be undone. I *think* at that point you can start pulling the bezel off but there might be other screws. Once you have the bezel off you get access to more screws holding the actual display in.

TraviS2000

A couple of points:

1) You can see I still have green LED's for the AC/Heat level indicator. This is because these are the only LED's that are actually soldered to the board. I have bought replacement LED's for them...just haven't got around to taking out the green ones and soldering in the blue ones yet.

2) You can compare the green brightness to your own to get an idea of how bright these actually are.

3) You can clearly see how the LED's behind the speedo/tach area stand out...what I called blotchy.

4) The audio controls on the left are brighter than the AC controls on the right. This is because the stock bulbs for the right side actually stick farther away from the control board than any of the other bulbs including the replacement. I am going to get around this by actually pulling the LED's off the plastic mounting and fixing them to the stock plastic mounting. Kind of hard to describe but if you get into it you'll see what I'm talking about.

LubedKoala

It looks great. If only someone had the machinery to make the blue filter with the appropriate white spots. Where's DJQuobe?

TraviS2000

I think it might be possible if you could:

1) Scan the stock piece into a digital file.
2) Clean up the image and turn it into just dots.
3) Print it out on a transparency sheet.
4) Put it back in the gauge "sandwich" with the blue filter, glass lcd, etc...

NFRs2000NYC

PM ideugene. He converted his entire dash to blue, and almost slit his wrists 1/2 way through it. It is a LONG and tedious process. IMHO, if you are asking the question, you probably shouldn't mess with it.