[76TA462]

I saw a video the other day of the dash lights being swapped to LED bulbs in an older Cougar XR-7. Does anyone know of a LED bulb kit to replace the OEM bulbs in the tach and speedo cluster of a second gen. Mine is a 1976 Trans Am and the cluster lighting is really poor at night. Thanks.

[HoneyHush]

https://www.ebay.com/b/Instrument-Pa...711/bn_1470759


I hope the link works for you. If not just search LED dash lights. You can change the color of the bulbs too. My brother did all of his in blue. Looked pretty cool.

[Grand73Am]

It's really just a matter of buying some LED bulb replacements for the old dash bulbs and installing them. You can buy them at SuperbrightLED.com

I only replaced the cluster illumination #194 bulbs in mine, since those are the ones responsible for how bright the light is for the cluster. I didn't replace the red warning light bulbs, turn signal bulbs, or headlight high beams light, since I can see those fine. I believe there are 6 illumination bulbs.

If you want to brighten up the small gas gauge and voltage gauge cluster too, it uses 1895 bulbs, so you'd need LED replacements for that bulb number.

[Grand73Am]

Also, while you're doing it, I suggest replacing the dome light bulb with an LED equivalent, and the floor courtesy light bulbs, if you have those too.

[Formulajones]

Agree with Grand73am. I just swap out the 194's that illuminate the gauges and leave the turn signal and high beam stuff alone.

Just make sure you buy LED's that are capable of dimming. Some out there act like an on/off switch making your dimming feature useless.

[Grand73Am]

I like them bright, so don't ever dim them anyway .

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Grand73Am

I like them bright, so don't ever dim them anyway .

I'm old, so I find they tend to keep the focus off the road if too bright, and some of the LED's, depending on brand, are pretty friggin bright. So it's nice to have the option of dimming when needed.

[76TA462]

Super, thanks for the info.

[FrankieT/A]

[JLMounce]

Yup as others have said, you just buy 194 replacement LED's. The only thing I didn't see mentioned by previous posters is that you can't simply remove the original bulbs and half hazardly install the new led bulbs. The old incandescent bulbs don't have a dedicated positive and negative on them. most LED's do however and if installed backwards they won't light and they'll also kill any other light that's using the same power or ground path on the printed circuit. You just need to be diligent about your install.

[Grand73Am]

There are some LED bulbs that they call "polarity sensitive", as JLMounce is talking about. With those, they only work one way, so if it doesn't light, turn it around.

But, now they make bulbs that are not polarity sensitive, so they will work either way. When looking for bulbs, look at the specifications of the bulb, and look for a "No" on the polarity sensitive spec, and you won't have that problem.

[76TA462]

Looking at the back of a spare tach and speedo cluster I have, I pulled one of the twist in housings that hold the 194 bulb. I can't see any way of determining polarity. If I put it in wrong is the only outcome that it doesn't work. Looking at a general blog (no idea what car type) there was a comment that I could burn out all other lights on the same circuit if I put in the LED with wrong polarity. I am looking at the Sylvania bulb but it has polarity. They aren't cheap but going through some reviews of LEDs a common theme is that the better ones are more dependable, last longer, etc. Thanks again.

[76TA462]

LOL. It was here for the burning out advice using same circuit. Guess this is just double checking.

[Grand73Am]

Originally Posted by 76TA462

Looking at the back of a spare tach and speedo cluster I have, I pulled one of the twist in housings that hold the 194 bulb. I can't see any way of determining polarity. If I put it in wrong is the only outcome that it doesn't work. Looking at a general blog (no idea what car type) there was a comment that I could burn out all other lights on the same circuit if I put in the LED with wrong polarity. I am looking at the Sylvania bulb but it has polarity. They aren't cheap but going through some reviews of LEDs a common theme is that the better ones are more dependable, last longer, etc. Thanks again.

There isn't any way to determine the polarity when installing the bulb. It's trial and error. If it doesn't work, it's in the wrong way, so you pull the bulb back out, turn it around and plug it back in and it should work. It doesn't hurt anything to put it in the wrong way. It just doesn't light up. I used some Sylvania LEDriving LED's that were polarity sensitive a few years ago when I did mine. So, it took a couple times re-installing a few of the bulbs to get them turned the right way so they would light up. After that, no problem. If I were doing it now, I would buy LED bulbs that are NOT polarity sensitive to avoid having to go through that again.

[STEELCITYFIREBIRD]

I would THINK you could test each LED bulb with diode tester on dvom, and hot and ground on circuit board, mark the ground side of each and install. A non polarity sensitive DIODE Bulb could be more to go wrong? IDK how this is accomplished, nor if old dashes rely on power being back fed to accomplish anything.

A few years back my bud put them in the dashes of all the semi's in his fleet.
Don't know what brand of bulbs he used. Changed back to standard incandescent, because of frequent failures.

I'll check with him if he found good bulbs yet, all his trucks are LED front to back now. Either he found something good or is swapping out a lot of lights.

If their is something good out there he will be in the know.

[Formulajones]

I've had issues with some of them that stop working prematurely. Usually just part of the LED quits working, or they start flickering. My father has a few different brands here, he's been an LED nut for quite a while. I've tried some of them in dome lights, trunk lights, and other courtesy lights with pretty good results. I just haven't really paid much attention to which brand is better though as far as working properly but what I have noticed is that if you don't buy the LED's that say "bright white" or something along those lines, they pretty much suck and don't light up any better than an incandescent bulb.

Something I've started tinkering with on a couple of the daily drivers is LED headlights. Now those I've found HUGE differences in brands and how well they light up, and it gets a bit expensive experimenting with those. I finally found a set that I was happy with that projects a strong beam down the road.

[FrankieT/A]

Originally Posted by FrankieT/A

Attachment 547336

I've had no problems with these as far as continually working. I just make sure the bulbs(?) themselves have the most LED's on them in order to give the most intensity. Mine are not dim-able but when going to a color they need to be as bright as possible anyway. I also changed the background color of the inside of the gauge housing to white instead of that light blue color that was original to get them as bright as possible. Probably not necessary if staying with white in which case dim-able might be more important. The picture looks brighter than they actually are, it was taken in the dark.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by FrankieT/A

I've had no problems with these as far as continually working. I just make sure the bulbs(?) themselves have the most LED's on them in order to give the most intensity. Mine are not dim-able but when going to a color they need to be as bright as possible anyway. I also changed the background color of the inside of the gauge housing to white instead of that light blue color that was original to get them as bright as possible. Probably not necessary if staying with white in which case dim-able might be more important. The picture looks brighter than they actually are, it was taken in the dark.

That's interesting. On some of our cars here I can't change the color unless I want to change all the gauges because the numbers themselves are colored slightly. Chevelles are that way in 1970, the numbers are actually green, and they went back to white numbers on the gauges in 71. It's not a colored back round like some cars.

On our 69 Camaro it all lights up with a green tint from the factory with a colored back round, but with the incandescent bulbs you could barely tell they had a mild green glow. I switched all the gauges over to bright white LED's with the most LED's on them that I could find. Not only is that stuff super bright now, it actually brought out the green tint more. I got dimmable LED's because on super dark roads when it's pitch black outside I need to turn them down a pinch, those dash lights are so damn bright the glow on my face makes it harder to focus outside. It did help tremendously with the vital gauges down on the console as those were always hard to read at night.

[Grand73Am]

Originally Posted by FrankieT/A

I've had no problems with these as far as continually working. I also changed the background color of the inside of the gauge housing to white instead of that light blue color that was original to get them as bright as possible.

I haven't had a problem with the LED's continuing to work either. I think the quality has continued to improve over the years.

On my 79 TA, I also changed the color inside of my cluster housing from the original blue to white, since I wanted to be sure the light was as bright as possible. I used gloss white for better reflectivity.

I also re-colored the back side of the black face of the cluster. You can influence the color of the light that way. I believe it was originally a light green color, which I didn't like. I painted it with a shade of blue that I preferred, which gives a slightly bluish tint to the bright white light, and it looks great to me.

Here's a night photo. You can only get an idea of the extra brightness from this. The camera was not able to reproduce the true bluish color of the lighting. It couldn't even reproduce the yellow and red on the tachometer for some unknown reason. It looks much clearer and cleaner in person, with more color, without the foggy or halo look you see in the photo.

001 by grand73am, on Flickr

[JLMounce]

FWIW, the LED bulbs I installed had a + and - labeled on the bulb itself. So all I had to do was look at the printed circuit and follow the power and ground paths, then position the bulbs accordingly.

I had the cluster out which made that far easier. If I was trying to do this with the cluster in, I'd purchase the bulbs that are not polarity sensitive. I believe Ames sells some.