Why are some needles red/orange and some yellow? mine are all yellow.

The needles fade from Red/orange to yellow, to eventually white due to sun exposure. Flourecent colors are prone to fadeing.

If you notice in '86 F150 picture here the transmission selector dial is the correct factory color. This is because the needle on the selector isn't painted, it's plastic. Less likely to fade and change colors.



http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/...T/100_5907.jpg


And the needle here on my radio dial doesn't see as much sunlight...
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/p...ictureid=67270

I just realized mine was that way. Maybe some day I will paint mine, but it looks like a major pain in the butt, or do the needles come off?

The needle comes off the speedometer, but not the rest of the gauges.

I wouldn't take them off anyway.

How I paint the needles is I got a Fluorecent Red Paint Marker, (Testor's #2575 or equivalent) and using an index card, slip the card in back of the needles and paint. You can do the same with a small detailing brush.

The trickiest needle to paint is the speedometer needle. It has a circlular shape around the base of the needle that needs careful steady hands to get right.

How do you get the plastic shield off from over the gauge cluster?

After you remove the instrument cluster bezel, there are six hex headed screws right on the front that holds the plastic lens, and the gauges face plate to the cluster.

That would explain why my red needles don't turn black at night - I don't have the filters on the bulbs so I'm getting the red end of the spectrum as well as everything else.

Yes. If the filters were on the bulbs, the regular red painted needle would look black as the filters remove the red light.

Also why your dash lights are 1/3 brighter. White light is a mixture of the three primary colors of light. Red, Green and Blue, just like on your TV set or computer monitor.

Filter out red, and the brightness is reduced by 1/3rd.


(I used to be a stage lighting engineer when I was younger pup, and is why I still know all this)

Well I drove my truck down the freeway for the first time today, ran great. THAT WAS LOUD! I noticed after I got off the freeway I had 35 PSI oil pressure at idle, on the throttle it's always 55 PSI. When I got back on the freeway to head home I was peeling out a bit around the corner hahahaha. That thing needs a different cam, lacks torque.

So, what range of light, meaning from infrared to ultraviolet, do the warm white LED's give?

Warm white light is phase shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, but shows the full spectrum of light. Just has a little more red than the other colors.

Cool White light is just the opposite, it's phase shifted toward the blue end.

I understood that was the case on the warm and cool white incandescent bulbs, but didn't know if the LED's gave an even range of color or if they favored a particular color.

The needles on mine were faded to white. So I just used what I had and brushed them yellow while it was apart.

Incandecents favor the red end of the spectrum usually due to resistance in the power sources operating the bulb filament.

From what I understand LED's tend not to favor any one part of the spectrum. Uses little power so resistance is not an issue.

But it all depends on what the bulbs were designed for.

For the light to look warm, or look cool for that matter, the light spectrum has to be shifted toward one end or the other of the spectrum. This can be done with external filters or with the bulbs themselves and varying power sources.

Filters are easier, more efficient and uses less energy to create desired colors, even though a part of the energy is wasted. To create a blue incandecent bulb for instance without a filter would require a lot of power and a highly resiliant filament otherwise it would burn out too quickly. Why most bulbs that are colored without filters are of the gas "neon" tube type variety.

LEDs are a little beyond me though. They were not used and barely thought of when I was working on stage lighting.

Should we have a discussion about kelvin temperature?
LED's can have filters or the color can be biased by doping of the semiconductor.
Slightly differing formulas will occur even within the same batch. These are then 'binned' according to actual output.
Some real LED geeks over on Candlepower. LED Flashlights

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...lar-White-LEDs