What Brightness LED's for Guages?

[pete]

Cool, sounds like a plan.

Getting weekend time is good, very difficult for me to get it these days and most of my stuff is late on weeknights...

[pete]

Wandered into the garage tonight and the answer to the speedo/tacho backlight issue was staring me straight in the face:



Both of them have those two holes at the bottom and as it turns out they're probably 4.9mm diameter, so a quick spin with a 5mm drill bit had them the perfect size for the LED's.

So, light on with just the two LED's in the bulb socket:



Definitely no illumination at the bottom there, so held a LED against one of the holes:



That will do the trick nicely!

So, as much as I didn't want to, I had to touch the original wiring a little...

Chopped the socket off so i could splice in some lead for the other two LED's I now need:



And all soldered up and heatshrinked ready to roll. Those LED's are a perfect fit in there:



And there we have it!



I realise the illumination isn't perfect, but there is light all the way around and it's only necessary at night where it'll be much easier to see anyway.

So, that's one half done, need to do the tacho and then the gauges can go back together... awesome!

[Mekanix]

One more thing i just remembered. With the led's i dont notice if my charging system is low or not. Whereas before led's if i wasnt getting a good charge the lights would be noticeably dimmer.
keep an eye out for that :-)

[pete]

One more thing i just remembered. With the led's i dont notice if my charging system is low or not. Whereas before led's if i wasnt getting a good charge the lights would be noticibly dimmer. The
keep an eye out for that :-)

That's cool, I have a voltage meter in the works to solve that problem

[Matchless]

Pete,
That looks very good! Next time I take my gauges off, guess what I am going to do!

I think you may want to drill two new holes as those you used are for dissipating any dampness or water. You may find the gauges fogging up and thus not drying out if it ever happens.

[pete]

Pete,
That looks very good! Next time I take my gauges off, guess what I am going to do!

I think you may want to drill two new holes as those you used are for dissipating any dampness or water. You may find the gauges fogging up and thus not drying out if it ever happens.

Cheers Andre! I'm pretty happy with it.

Guess I'm drilling holes after all

That thought did cross my mind but I thought surely not... oh well, won't be hard to pop another pair in just to be sure.

[Mekanix]

That's cool, I have a voltage meter in the works to solve that problem

Me too, my bike doesn't have the fuel gauge so I'm installing a voltmeter where it would be.

thing is,,, Analog or digital

[pete]

Good plan! I don't have a fuel gauge, so instead I'm making up a LED bar graph meter that Bakalorz put up in the thread below:

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=163546

I'm not a fan of digital readouts on bikes myself (personal preference), and I generally prefer needles moving or lights going up and down, so my suggestion would of course be analog if it's not too small.

[Mekanix]

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum...d.php?t=163546

Looks interesting,, I'm thinking of using an actual gas gauge for mine.

Check this out.










I took my cluster apart to replace an annoying burnt out 1st gear led

thought you might like the pics

[pete]

Nice work! Yep, I like the pic's, that's a neat and tidy job you did on those LED's!

Do you know what mcd rating they have?

I got the extra drain holes drilled, a little smaller than the originals but I can't see that making much difference:



I then finished up by doing the tacho LED's, and seeing as I wanted it done tonight and it was exactly the same as the speedo, I didn't bother with any pic's there.

Glad I didn't try to get pic's in the end because I finished it off, and reassembled:



Only to have the camera start turning itself off with flat batteries again

I tested everything and it all looked pretty good to me, so once I have some fresh batteries I'll take some of the finished product.

I need to flip my headlight ears so I'll do that before mounting the gauges again then I should be able to give it all a dry run in place on the bike and be all done hopefully.

[cowboyup3371]

Looking good Pete. I'm following this as it's started me thinking about doing something different with my clock lights. Won't be for awhile still but I like the idea you are going with.

[pete]

Cheers Scott, it's a bit tedious but I feel for me it was worth the effort.

Be sure to look at cal_look_zero's thread as his backlights have turned out a bit better with his method:

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=176316

[pete]

Finally got back to this tonight with some fresh camera batteries.

I've taken a quick dodgy video of the gear position indicator, so I just did the other lights tonight, and don't worry about the indicators not flashing, the voltage drops to about 9v when I turn them on because I don't think the old PC power supply I'm using can cope with that load real well: