I put some white LED's in the car when I put in a set of AWD gauges. The LED's were this style:


While pretty good overall they do project light unevenly, so it looks a bit like this:


(That photo is a little underexposed to show the hotspotting better... you can actually see everything and all those stars quite well!)

So those LED's with the individual lights going every which way would be much better I think

I've found though that I also prefer the stock bulbs, and the super brightness of the LED's didn't really do much except effect a further dimming of the gauges which just mean the A/C panel is so dark I can't really see it at all now hehe If you did a full LED replacement on everything you'd probably be alright with that small problem!

 

your LEDs shouldn't have any effect on the AC gauges. you probably just turned the dial to low and didn't realize it.

Anyways, here is a couple of snaps I took on the way down to Rd. Atl. Ignore the odd coloring, my camera was set a bit funky...



The only noticeable dark spot in the pic. is at 3k rpms. there is some slight dark spots at the two ends of the fuel gauge and the temp gauge, but I didn't notice them till I was trying to take pictures (I will have a full gauge pic. sometime this week).

 

I know they don't affect directly, my point was that with LED's in the cluster but stock bulbs everywhere else there's a mismatch in brightness, so if you like the cluster to be not that bright at night, you need to use a lower dimmer setting than with stock bulbs, which in turn makes the A/C stuff darker still than you might like

Nice red lighting for your gauges mate... I'm sold on the red colour with the gauges in my car now.

 

yea, sorry the coloring is a bit odd. its actually amber and an organish amber at that. Its just my camera saturation is set for a bright sunny day. If you look at my previous post in the thread, the gauges are that color (except my odometer/trip is now actually RED instead of green).

I understand what you are getting at now. I have been thinking about doing a write-up for the radio cluster & the HVAC controls, but there just doesn't seem to be enough demand. Plus I am busy with engine bay work at the moment so all my interior mods are on hold.

P.S. My whole car is LED'd except for the headlights and radio. lol

 

you used the wrong LED's, you need the ones with a 360 degree viewing area. you will be suprised on the difference.

 

I haven't seen these critters around, I think that they would work for my custom gauges. I still have some experimenting to do with lighting them, and getting material that won't warp in San Antonio heat.

 

the red can be al little dim, but with your custom guages i think it would look good.

 

Ok, So here is a nice non-blurry non-funky colored Mylar picture. you can see the one hotspot near idle.

 

I admit I might have to do this one day. Looks nice with the right led