White Face Gauges

Topic: White Face Gauges (Read 1711 times) previous topic - next topic

White Face Gauges

October 01, 2012, 08:24:15 AM

Who has 'em? I'm thinking about picking up a set off ebay, for my '88 Turbo Coupe.

Post up a few pics of them installed and illuminated, if you have these. I'm interested to see exactly what it will look like once in the car.

White Face Gauges

Reply #1 – October 02, 2012, 10:04:13 AM

Just got mine in the mail today. Still waiting on the shipment of ebay LED's to finally make it here from China.

No one else here has these? Guess I must be the first....

White Face Gauges

Reply #2 – October 02, 2012, 05:55:10 PM

What led's are you going with? I changed my dash color to blue and used led's off of ebay and they work ok, they could be better with the light spread.

White Face Gauges

Reply #3 – October 02, 2012, 07:45:57 PM

I pulled the green filters out of my Sport cluster, and used red 94 bulbs...looks nice now. Nice orange/reddish glow, almost like the newer pontiacs

White Face Gauges

Reply #4 – October 04, 2012, 01:19:23 AM

Side-Emitting 194's. Went with Blue in my cluster last time, which ended up being far too bright, and messed with my night vision somewhat. Going with Red this time. Almost all the boats I have been on used Red LED's for their instrument lighting, and it really does help out significantly with your night vision. I see now why they went with Green originally in most cars, instead of Blue. I'm also gonna completely disassemble the Cluster, not only to remove the Green Filters behind the bulbs, but also to remove the Green gel-coat layer behind the gauge faces, so I will have pure Red light, instead of slight amalgam of both.

White Face Gauges

Reply #5 – October 08, 2012, 02:35:19 AM

I'm kinda liking the green bulb filters being removed, but leaving the gauges intact, with the stock gauge faces. I was playing with some LEDs I have and found one I need to buy more of. I used it in the center of this picture, a different LED in the upper right, and the rest were the stock incandescent bulb:

After these pictures, I realized the plastic over the odometer was hazy from years of residue, so it's clean now. The green still lights up well, and evenly if I use the same type of bulb. The white needles and odometer stand out against the green. I have a blue version of the same type of bulb, and it distributed like so:

White Face Gauges

Reply #6 – October 08, 2012, 10:30:44 AM

Any pics of the red LEDs? Wanting to change mine over after I find a tach.

White Face Gauges

Reply #7 – October 12, 2012, 12:49:53 PM

Sorry, did not think to get a pic of the LED's before I assembled everything. They are your standard side-emitters though, nothing special. When I finally got them lit up at nighttime, they are still far too dim for my liking though. Am probably gonna go back to the stock bulbs for now.

The White Face gauge overlays are a waste of money if you do alot of driving at night like me. Even the bright stock incandescent bulbs can barely shine through them. I'm taking mine back off today, and going back to the stock Matte Black faces.

White Face Gauges

Reply #8 – October 12, 2012, 01:27:20 PM

Quote from: Big B;400343

Even the bright stock incandescent bulbs can barely shine through them. I'm taking mine back off today, and going back to the stock Matte Black faces.

Yeah, this has been my finding for a lot of stock cluster modifications. I'm tempted to completely modify my cluster more and install localized LEDs to provide more color control and output of the final product. That's just me going overboard with any project I do though, and the stock gauges are still pretty bad in terms of usefulness and accuracy though. I currently have better things to waste my time on.