Gauge Cluster Tip, Not bright enough? Options

[lagos]

For the longest time I always felt like that stock green gauge cluster was always light too dark and kind of hard to read at times, and just over all didn't look right at night. After a little bit of research, I realized that 168 bulbs are exactly the same size as the stock 194 bulbs that the cluster uses, but they are a higher wattage bulb, so i decided to buy a set and try them out. To my surprise, this totally fixed the problem! Now the gauge cluster is nice and bright and light up more evenly and makes the whole cluster look a lot better. It really feels like toyota should have used these bulbs from the get go, so I thought id pass this along in case it was an issue that bothered anyone else.

[Zimluura]

i'm not an electrical engineer or anything, but could the higher_than_spec current potentially hurt the electrical system??
i mean, if it works that's good, but does anyone know the tolerance of that fuse (which should be set to blow before a trace burns)?
or are the 168 bulbs just more efficient?

edit - punctuation

This post has been edited by Zimluura: Mar 27, 2010 - 12:10 PM

[solidxsnake]

i'm not an electrical engineer or anything, but could the higher_than_spec current potentially hurt the electrical system??
i mean, if it works that's good, but does anyone know the tolerance of that fuse (which should be set to blow before a trace burns)?
or are the 168 bulbs just more efficient?

edit - punctuation

You've definitely got a good reason to be cautious; there's definitely a possibility to pull more current by using the 164s. That said, I highly doubt that it would cause any problems, unless you have something else that draws quite a bit of current from the same circuit.