5000MCD LED's, Hard to Install? Options

[celiracer]

Hi guys. Well i'm wanting to make my guage cluster all red but leave the needles white. And i will be getting a boost, oil pressure, and a EGT guage for my a-piller. I have a few questions to be answered.
1. Should i get black faced guages? Or white faced?
2. Does anyone know if i painted the numbers and everything red with a type of paint and got bright white bulbs would that work?
And 3. with the guages in the pillar how could i match them with my guage cluster if every guage that i find has orange needles?

Also wanting to redo my climate control, and all my little bulbs to red. How hard are they to install? I can't get into the how-to.

This post has been edited by celiracer: Oct 9, 2006 - 12:49 PM

[Zimluura]

ok, leds are usually have a voltage drop of like 3V or so. to use fun terms from dansdata: if you hook 3V led up to a 12V power supply without a resister it'll burn really really bright for a second then it'll become a smoke emitting diode, then finally a friode.

there are led calculators around, i use this one
http://metku.net/index.html?path=mods/ledcalc/index_eng

which will tell you what kind of resistor you need for your single led, series led, or parallel circuits. check the min/max voltages of your leds to get all the data. because i'm sorta novice with electronics i'd just go with whatever it has for typical.

it's a good idea to pickup a multimeter and check what kind of voltage you get from whatever socket though. my cc unit was a solid 12V, but the dome light was 12V with battery power and 14V with the alternator.

for your ideas on red back with white needles: sounds very cool and original. so i'd suggest getting enough stuff to try a few approaches.

lighting gels (when i got mine for the clock this was the only place i could find em for quick online buying)
http://www.axemusic.com/prodtype.asp?PT_ID...lighting%20gels

combine those with a white led might work. could also try it with the regular bulbs (without the green toyota condoms). but that'll still be a bit yellowish. custom wire the whole thing and you should be good for whatever you're heart desires. but the circuitry for the gauge cluster (at least on mine) is a flimsy plastic type, and not a rigid board like the cc unit was.

/edit
one other thing. be *sure* to check the resistors power disipation. allot of times when you want a single led hooked up to a 12V source you need something more than the quarter-watt resistors they sell at lsdiodes. for half-watt resistors you might need to go to mouser.com.

This post has been edited by Zimluura: Oct 12, 2006 - 8:42 AM