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LED gauges-cheap how to

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2.6K views 10 replies 5 participants last post by  suprajztwenty  
#1 ·
so the orange tint at night isnt really your style eh? well heres 1 option you may consider-its a straightforward procedure and was very effective in blinging my gauges at night.

first of all-the gauge face has layers of paint in the plastic-so to truly get rid of the orange, you might as well just get blank (clear) faces and print your own. if your cheap and want to save time-red is the way to go- all the way.

i was wanting green-but i doubt green and orange make a good mix...so i had a bunch of old red LED's laying around and decided to give it a shot just to see what itd look like-i made a quick rig and then was really happy the way the tach turned out, so i kept going and made 3 seperate "rigs" for each gauge-and a total of 9 led's for the complete system.

quick tips first-
make sure youre using the correct resistor in series with the led's you choose.
if your led is round at the end-chop it with some pliers or a grinder will make quick work of it-the flat surface really helps dissapate the light (thanks to whitehendrix on kawiforums)
make sure you have a soldering iron, hot glue gun, fairly thin gauge wire-and the obvious resistors and leds.

i actually robbed mine out of a 9 bulb light assembly-1 resistor for every 3 bulbs...i just followed the circuit board to find the correct direction of polarity.

now onto wiring up each rig...theres plenty of ways to do wiring-but i think my setup made it easily adjustable (took a few times to get placement right)
i start from the power side and work forward. i dont think resistors care about polarity-but i kept it the same anyways...

so going "in series", the hot wire from the harness ties into the resistor, then the wire FROM the resistor goes to first LED (positive terminal) then i move onto the next led, from the ground terminal of the 1st led i wire it to the + terminal of the 2nd led-and so on with the 3rd, then the last wire ties into the gauge's ground system. tip- the + side is always the smaller part you can see... like this-
Image

see the "dish" part on the right-thats the ground side, the left is positive.

tieing it into the system- you can pull the old bulb's socket out then push the wires forward-out of the socket, and wire into the base of the terminal-then when you pull the wire and terminal back down into the rubber peice, its already insulated-really clean...you can see how the wires go into the original bulb placement here in the pic

sorry, its a lot easier than im making it...just cant get the wording down...heres what i did.
Image

you can see my housing was banged up pretty bad-so swapping LED's couldnt possibly make the assembly any worse... you might be able to see how the bulbs are angled-and held in with hot glue (which is amazing for this job-super simple)
now a comparison
Image

then with the speedo lit up
Image


do you see the darker spots around 100mph and 10k on the gauges-well this is because the gauges are designed for bulbs-so they put these printed black dots on the back-i guess to direct light accross the lens?

here they are on the speedo-
Image


and after sanding with 1500 grit on the tach-
Image


and finally
Image
Image


the pictures do it justice-they dont look like true red-but trust me, theyre beautiful- this is one of the most satisfying mods ive done
 
#7 ·
only when they hear yours...its gonna be funny as hell-i roll up all silent like, you roll up and cause a 10 car pile up because of people covering their ears.

mine actually looks classy-with my white front fender it reminds me of a penguin.

oh- windscreen bolts have been replaced too, 15 bucks shipped-couldnt beat it for the time they sent it in

no more excuses nizz, paint some fairings or SOMTHING! and wtf happend to the get off my ass horn?
 
N
#8 ·
Yeah, I used projector hex-head set screws for my windscreen bolts. I think they're starting to rust tho. They're cool tho cause the color of them are flat black.

OH-AND, I got some work done on my tail lights, pics soon. I got halogen's in the tail fixture just gotta test them for braking functioning. I have Tuesday off and plan on making an escape to work on finishing that up and getting some head way on the clutch too.:squint

As for the horn, you'll all know soon enough...:evil
 
#11 ·
see the little bit of yellowing on the numbers...well mine were really bad, red was the best thing i could come up with for cheap. i think im going to go with a koso gauge soon, but my buddies bike is the same thing and he wants a set...i may do superbrights in green just to see how it goes

and about the needles, youre right, the pics dont do it justice...the needles show up just fine. you could take it a step forward and do a 4 led per gauge (mine were only 3) and use the 4th right at the base of the needle. i think the needles are clear with red paint on the bottom...i "think"...anyways, you could paint it white for colors...a clear needle doesnt distribute light all that well
 
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