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If the same resistor (the coil around the light switch ****) controls the instrument cluster and the Radio and heater panel brightness, why does my radio and heater panel have a much wider range of bright to dark, yet the instrument cluster is only dark to darker.......
If the same resistor (the coil around the light switch ****) controls the instrument cluster and the Radio and heater panel brightness, why does my radio and heater panel have a much wider range of bright to dark, yet the instrument cluster is only dark to darker.......
Have you looked at the colored lenses over the bulbs in your instrument panel? They become opaque over time, causing the panel to become dimmer. Some people solve this by removing the lenses altogether (giving a white lighting to the panel), other remove the lenses and bulbs both and replace the bulbs with dimmable blue LEDs.
For myself, I tried the LEDs and wasn't happy with them (not bright enough), so I ended up going back to white bulbs with the colored lenses removed. I don't have the stock blue-green glow, but what I do have are easily readable gauges.
Big Blue's gauges are easily readable due to the blue LED's:
Those are nice...had mine looked that bright I'd have kept them. Maybe I just had crummy LEDs, but they were barely brighter than the setup I had before I started tinkering. Now that I have white incandescents in there again (without the lenses) I keep them at about 2/3 brightness...bright enough to see the instruments clearly without causing a glare or ruining my night vision.
David - That was taken with the little "shop" camera, the old Nikon 990. And it is better than the one I got with the "big" camera.
But, there's a very strong similarity in all of these pic's - blue LED's. I think they look "stock", but then you couldn't hardly see the color of the lights in any of my trucks when I got them, so what do I know?
