Holicori

Before the forum elitist come and bust my *****....yes I know where the search button is (this site actually has a good search function), I have used it, and even bookmarked a few different threads.

However, most of them have been written awhile ago, 2010-2012.

So, I'm wondering if there are better led bulbs to use for changing my dash cluster led lights to avoid hotspots.

On one post, the mentioned using a circular led bulb to try to disperse the light. I've looked for them...and can't find them. However, now, they have bulbs that have like 5-8 lights on different sides of the bulb. Is that what people are using?

I have one here, is this good? Or will it cause hot spots?


http://www.oznium.com/t10-bulb

akdoggie

Those will work fine. There are numerous LED's, all similar in size and shape. The ones you picked may throw a lot of light, so you may have adjust down your dimmer. There are others on eBay that are colored, or white if you prefer. None of the LED's get very hot in comparison to the original bulbs, so you can use just about any LED. Note, 168, 194 are the same bulb when it comes to LED's.

These below put out a wide pattern, and tend to give the dash an even lighting, if you are interested. Here is an example. I'm not recommending this particular bulb, just the design with all the LED's on the top. Notice how the light is patterned in the pics.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-Xenon-Wh...VV7hOY&vxp=mtr

Holicori

I saw those but thought they would make an even stronger hotspot, glad I asked.

So you'd recommend that type of bulb over the others and one I linked for more evenness?

ScrewThat

Before you buy anything, give us the year of your truck. They changed them up a little bit over the years. Soon as I know the year I can link you to either the bulbs I used or equivalent ones if the sizes are different.

Keep in mind, you won't achieve much as far as changing the color of the lights. If you have an older truck, the tint on the cluster is blue, and appears green when the yellow light of an incandescent bulb hits it. You can take the sheet off the cluster and remove the colored film with acetone and a little elbow grease. That's what I did on my truck to achieve the white cluster.

If you have a 97-98 truck, if you buy a white led, the dash color will change to blue. You can also use a blue led here. If you wanted close to the original color, my guess would be you could buy yellow LEDs and install those.

For 99-03, the film that colors the light is green. So you're kind of limited to green. You can buy white or green or I would assume a yellow led would work here as well.

Now another thing to pay attention to is bulb size. My cluster did NOT have any 194/168 sized bulbs with the t10 base size. Mine were all 74 size bulbs. Little suckers. I'll link what I bought. I would highly recommend these if this is the size you have, if not anything from superbrightleds.com will work wonderfully.

74 sized bulbs

Forum thread with more info

My recommendation for you is to get your cluster out of the dash and figure out what bulbs and how many of each to buy. On my cluster, some of the bulbs were slightly bigger than others but the base was the same. And so the leds still worked and still put more light out than factory. Then decide what you want to do color wise.

akdoggie

Where is the light for the odometer read out? I see a lot of white on the speedometer but nothing of the odometer. I did the same thing when I did my dash. The 97=98 cluster, to me, looks better than the 99 and up. I think I like the way the gauges are all spread out (two on each side of the speedometer and tachometer), over them all being on the left (99-03's).

Holicori: Did you notice on Screw That's pictue, how the light is bright in certain spots? The 20, 100 and the 5 on the tach are hot spots. This is common on the 97-8 trucks. Some areas are brighter lit than other areas. This is what I was describing with the style you were showing. If you look at the areas that are brighter, then look a blt over, the light is more diffused and even. This is what the bulb I showed you gives off. There is nothing wrong with either bulb, I was just showing the difference in the way the bulbs put out their light. Remember also, LED's only work one way. Try the cluster once you replace the bulbs, and before bolting it in, make sure all your lights are correctly installed. This is the time to make sure, before reattaching all the hardware. Good luck.

ScrewThat

My truck is a 2002 SCREW one owner with the original cluster. It's got the digital read out for the odometer but the solder points on the circuit board are bad and it wasn't illuminating. It is still green, however, along with the gear indicator.

As far as hot spots go, incandescent bulbs will do the same thing. Ford designed the cluster face to diffuse the light differently. When you take the face off and look at the back side, you will notice a layer of white film covering a layer of green film. The white film is used to diffuse the lights and is actually significantly thicker in places to effectively kill hot spots. In my case, the bulbs used had no effect on the hot spots, it was solely the fact that in order to remove the green film, the white diffusing layer had to come off as well.

To be honest though, the picture severely exaggerates the hot spots. It is not nearly as bad to the human eye in person.

Edit: @akdoggie I would avoid that style led. With the light only coming from the front, it won't diffuse properly and will cause hot spots. Those have a light output angle of approximately 120 degrees while the ones I used are closer to a full 360 excluding, obviously, the sides with no diode on them. The website claims 360 though.

Holicori

I have a 2003 f150 SCREW lariat.

I'm actually going to be redoing the ENTIRE interior pretty much in a week or two. I have new carpet, headliner, visors, speakers, double din. etc.

I'm also going to paint all the tan dash/door panels black. So Im actually going to pull the entire dash out to paint it..and want to go ahead and change the bulbs out as well. I'm sure its about 1000x easier with the dash out

I was thinking about going with a red lighting system. To get a different color you only have to get rid of the film on the inside correct? Once I do that there wont be anything to retard the original color of the bulb right?

ScrewThat

That is correct. Be VERY careful when you separate the cluster face from the backing panel. Mine tore in a couple spots where the glue was holding it down. I used acetone and a high grit sand paper to remove the film. Be careful to only remove what you want clear. And have something ready to clean up. Your fingers will be green for a good while. Also, make sure you have some sort of clear spray adhesive and make sure you press it flat or your needles will stick.

When re-aligning the needles, there's a couple methods you can use. If you have a tuner with gauges, you can re-align according to those. If not, start the truck and let it idle for 15-20 min and then take a picture of where your needles are at and place accordingly. Or you could enter the diagnostic mode that displays your vehicle speed, rpm's and other info digitally on your odometer.

This came as an afterthought to me, but using a translucent gift wrapping tape over the portions where you removed the film might act as a diffuser and reduce hotspots. You could experiment and add multiple layers until you get it completely uniform.

ScrewThat

I wanted to post this picture to show how the film actually is what kills the hotspots. This is with the film removed but still with the original incandescent bulbs. Notice how the 20 and 100 are still brighter.

akdoggie

You can use a less bright bulb in those 3 particular sockets, and that might also defuse the light more. With mine, I went with the ones similar to what I showed for those 3 bulbs, and used the balance with the 5 LED's like yours shows. The picture I showed was of the style but not the exact bulbs I used, so this must be why people are against this style bulb. I should of found the exact ones, which push 170 degrees, and are less bright than many of the others. I could only find the ones I wanted in the Motorcycle section, for some reason. This is how I got my light to defuse evenly. I also used the Aqua Blue, not the regular blue. They were a bit harder to find, but for some reason the motorcycle crowd has them on eBay under motorcycles. I was able to buy some pod lights in the aqua also, and have since put them into the front doors, and also under the dash for my interior lighting. This summer, I'm going to take those out and replace them with RGB LED's and use a controller w/remote to set my interior lighting, anyway I want it. I love the ambient lighting in my Mustang and the Mycolor options, so this is the only way I know to get some of those features into the older vehicles.