How To: Change Your Cluster to Blue L.E.D.s/Incandescent bulbs for $8

AmBo · Mar 2, 2008

I like the white! Very nice touch. Bright as all hell looking

Cmpfreak88 · Mar 2, 2008

Would anyone happen to know any details on how to take off the face of the HVAC? I was stuck because the little tabs around the outside wouldn't push in and I wasn't able to pull off my middle knob. I'm going to go out right now and try again because the aftermarket knobs all say just to pull them straight off... Gonna give it a shot.

Edit: Yeah, didn't work. I pulled and pulled on that thing and it would not give. When I took it all apart it looked like it was pretty well stuck to the metal wheel on the back. I still wouldn't be able to get those notches out though anyways.

jprovence · Mar 3, 2008

What are you trying to do witht the HVAC? the face doesn't come off. The unit unbolts from the dash with 4 screws on either side, and the knobs should pull straitght off.

whiteDemon · Mar 6, 2008

00s281sc368 said:
This is how it looks on mine
Note it's a little less bright in real life than on the picture.

Does anybody know what color bulb he used ( white or blue )
I tried pm but it looks like he hasn't been on hear in a while. Reason I ask is that I have the same gauges as he does and i would really like to order the tri-leds bulbs but I just don't know what color I should get to have the blue affect.. thanks in advance guys..

Cmpfreak88 · Mar 6, 2008

jprovence said:
What are you trying to do witht the HVAC? the face doesn't come off. The unit unbolts from the dash with 4 screws on either side, and the knobs should pull straitght off.

The face doesn't come off at all?! Nooo! I'll cut it off if I have to, I want to get it off and sand it down so I can get the white! And my middle knob of the three is the one that isn't coming off. If you look at my picture of the middle knob you can see at about the 11 o'clock position there is a white crack where the front started cracking as I tried to pry off that middle knob... It may match my stereo now but I'll be taking it out and putting in a carputer and I want a nice clean white.

SWEET GT · Mar 11, 2008

I just got done reading this and was thinking of doing it...but it seems alot of people who have the stock gauges have not had luck. I myself have an 01 GT as well (built in the first qtr of 01)

Id love get the dash guages blue, and do the same with my autometer phantom a-pillar gauges...

Did any 01 guys get this to work right? I know the bulbs are white/clear and the guage overlay is tinted green..I cant see how the tri-led blue leds can power through the green enough to look really blue/bright.

Justincredible · Mar 12, 2008

Did mine tonight. I have the Steeda white face gauges on my 2002. Only disappointment was that the backing on the Steeda gauges has a green tint that is directly behind the white for the face so there is no way to get rid of the green.

Result is a little closer to an I dont know I guess you could call it like an aqua color or something? Still way better than stock green and I didnt have any problems with my needles being dark.

Now to change the rest of the dash... Soon as the rest of the LED's I ordered show up.

AmBo · Mar 12, 2008

needles look bright and badass. nice!

Justincredible · Mar 13, 2008

They look brighter in the pictures... My cameras night settings are retarded or maybe I just dont have it set right... but what ever. Has anyone else had any functional problems after doing this. During daytime driving my cd player, odometer and traction light(if its turned off) all go out when I hit my brakes... at night when my headlights are on it doesnt do this... any ideas??

Justincredible · Mar 21, 2008

Got the stuff in to finish doing the rest of my dash today. Was a pain in the.... but got it almost all done. Just have to rewire the leds in my defrost button they are wired backwards so its not coming on. I used 3mm blue leds for the switches and 5-led 194 wedge bulbs for the HVAC panel. The center console is about 3X as bright as my gauges turned out. It lights up my whole interior. Anyway, here are some pics.

blckstng96 · Mar 21, 2008

anybody know how to change the needle color?

Justincredible · Mar 21, 2008

blckstng96 said:
anybody know how to change the needle color?

I'm not 100% sure but I think its probably same as the inside of your hvac knobs... its back of the clear plastic is colored red... you should be able to sand the red off and then it would show up whatever color your bulbs are... just a guess because I have never actually had them off to look at them.

Cmpfreak88 · Mar 25, 2008

Justincredible, you can probably get rid of that green tint if it's only on the backside of those overlays by sanding it down, unless on those it's all the way through... then you could cut it out with a razor, lol.

As for my HVAC's, turns out I just had to use a little force and outsmart those damn clips. Anyways, here's the result after taking off the tint!

Next plans are making some little inserts for those knobs, changing my defroster lights, then dome lights, map lights, a dimmer, and some led tubes. May even be painting the interior tomorrow!

Justincredible · Mar 25, 2008

Cnpfreak88, I also pulled mine apart and removed the green. All you have to do with the knobs it pull out the little plastic pieces in them and sand down the tops.

As for my gauges its clear plastic with a green on the front and then the white over the green... only way to get rid of the green would be through the white. Only other option is to do the razor idea like you said, but I am not very motivated to tackle that just yet...

Also have you tackled the trac, defrost, and fog lights switches yet? If not I have some pics of them taken apart. I will post them here. If you check back to page ten of this thread you can see how they turned out. One of them isnt lit up in the picutres though because the led's are wired backward... grrr polarity... havent felt like pulling it back apart and switching it around.

here are pics.

Cmpfreak88 · Mar 25, 2008

Hmm... yours is different than mine, on mine there was a blue film behind and that whole plastic piece inside the knob is completely blue. On the 99-00 we don't have those switches on the center console so I don't have to do that, but my rear window defroster still has the green tint and a yellow light that I want to change so I'm gonna have to pull that off, other than that though I'm pretty satisfied with it! I actually just painted some of my interior pieces silver today.

Oh yeah, and what kind of LED's did you use in those switches. I want to put some LED's under the dash to light up that area and those are pretty dang bright!

Silvergto2 · Mar 25, 2008

I started down this path of changing the LEDS to blue but then later decided to do Speedhut over lays for the speedo and hvac. I did tear apart the Trac, Defrost, and Fog switches and put in 12 volt ready 3mm leds (Ordered them on ebay, they came with the resistor already soldered to the led). I saw a writeup in the 05 GT section about a guy that tore apart his stang to make it blue and he actually took apart the 6-cd player and changed those leds as well. I am going to try that in a couple of months and will post pics. I also ordered some silver/black HVAC knobs from MGW that had the red indicator on it so it matched my interior better. Here's a pic

Cmpfreak88 · Mar 25, 2008

Looks pretty good, but I'm a little cheap, haha.

Anyways, I'm taking apart my rear defroster button right now and it's kinda... weird... pulled off the button and the LED's are way in there. The LED for the words are from a twist-in bulb that just had a little rubber sock over it that I ripped off, but I'll probably end up replacing the bulb with an LED anyways. The other one is soldered to the board and I'll be replacing that one with a little red LED. Shouldn't be too bad though.

jprovence · Mar 26, 2008

I put red LEDs in the switches. it was a 3mm from radioshack. and the think the resistors I used were around 580ohms. They put off stock like lighting. Not intrusive at all. It looks orange in the picture. But it is truly red. It matches my father inlaws Audi A8

View attachment 325101
I love the AVIC-D3. It adjust very nicely to the color changes. I actually added a few red LEDs under the console door that shines on the center stack. Its a very subtle red glow on the face of everything. And looks really nice on all the billet

Justincredible · Mar 26, 2008

I like the red look... I just went through all the trouble to change everything and actually decided yesterday I wanted to try red lights instead! The blue on my toggle switches turned out extremely bright! It lights up my whole car which I dont like. I am going to have to find some dimmer ones. Where did you say you got yours from? What was teh sellers ID on ebay so I can look them up. Mine came with resistors but not attached so it made for some interesting wiring in teh tiny little switches. As for the rest of my lights I am going to change them to incandescent because the LED's are screwing up my flasher module or something for some reason?? When my lights are on there is no problem but during the daytime when I hit my brakes my dash lights turn on and my cd player and odometer dim... then when I use my blinkers, I have sequentials, my interior lights and odometer flash with the sequencer... never had a problem until I changed all this to LED's. Any Ideas... Oh I also have all LED's in my corners and my tail lights and reverse lights but they all have the correct load resistors on them and work perfect before my dash conversion. And they look Bada$$ at night! Sorry for the long post but any help would be appreciated.

jprovence · Mar 26, 2008

I got my LED's from radio shack. I used around a 580ohm resistor, And I used incandencent in the HVAC. The blue part doesn't light up becasue the red light won't pass though it. Other then that, its a very even lighting thoughout the face. All you have to do it throw in some red incandecant bulbs in your hvac and solder some red LEDs and your done. I left the center film inside the HVAC. I think I may go back in and take it out though to see if I Can get the blue stripe to lite up even a little bit.

How To: Change Your Cluster to Blue L.E.D.s/Incandescent bulbs for $8

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