[supradrew]

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-

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.

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

then with the speedo lit up

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-

and after sanding with 1500 grit on the tach-

and finally

the pictures dont do it justice-they dont look like true red-but trust me, theyre beautiful- this is one of the most satisfying mods ive done

 

[whitehendrix]

******'s nerdy electronics tech tips of the day.

-to indicate LED polarity... the bulb has a D shape. look tfor the flat spot. the flat spot is the Anode, or positive side.

-if you're still confused, the smaller of the two angled metal pieces (the one without the dish and tiny cube in the middle) is the Anode.

-12V will usually require a 1000 ohm resistor. this depends on the LED tho.. and how many are hooked up in the circuit.

theres LED resistor calculators on the interwebz. google them shits./ you'll find them.

- if you don't like how an LED is focusing light, file it flat with a metal file or sandpaper. don't go anywhere near the little metal shit inside the LED. theres a wire in there connecting the germanium cube (in that dish on the cathode) to the anode.. filing/grinding/sanding too far will kill that wire and the LED is not useless. only grind to the end of the radius. this will leave you probably .020-.035" before the danger zone, and will still let the LED casing act as a heatsink.

good shit supra.

 

[supradrew]

exactly what he said...

and thanks man-its ghetto looking at first-but who in the hell is going to see behind the gauges? they look facotry once theyre on the bike. if i would have found a guide like this-it might have taken me all of an hr to do it...the last 2 gauges took about 20 minutes.

so please dont read my long ass instruction list thinking that its going to take days and back and forth runs to radio shack or frys-it really was simple

 

[whitehendrix]

i wanna find out what style bulbs are in the dash. i wanna say 194's but its been a long time since i played around with lights enough to recall the numbers just by lookin at em.

i wanna say theres LED retrofits that plug in to the harness aand give ya any flavor you want.. thought i saw them on www.superbrightleds.com ?

more specifically http://www.superbrightleds.com/specs/bulb_specs.htm

but free or ubercheap and homemade is far better imho.

i dunno.. i'm doin my own shit too.. already did "customized" LEDS behind the temp gauge, and i gots ta go get some white or blue (or both) LEDS from somewhere for the back lighting.. i think what ima do is drill behind the gauge in the gauge cluster housing and hot-glue them in those holes.. this leaves te leads outside the cluster for access and all and aims the light right at the back of the gauge faceplate. we'll see how that works here when i get some extra $$ to get them.. might be buyin my T3 first..

 

[supradrew]

youre right-194 bulbs...and yes, theres conversions that pop right in-like i did on my car, but the light doesnt cover the entire face very well.

so by positioning each led, you get more even and brighter coverage...plus-youd have to chop some spots inside the housing anyways-might as well do it cheapo if youre going to tear the whole thing down.

 

[lilpunk1133]

Man you went through a lot of trouble for nothing...I went blue with mine and the bulbs just go right into the stock hole...ordered blue for the speedo and tack and the bright light indicator and red for oil and green for neutral and turn sigs....Looks great and I didnt have to sand anything....thanks to superbrightleds.com

 

[supradrew]

seriously? we need pics on this one-i dont think the orange inside of the lens will make the blue look normal. PLUS the stock positions of the 194 bulbs BLOW for LED placement-it just doesnt dissapate the light the way i wanted to.

btw, it wasnt hard at all for me to do. worst part was sanding the black shit off the back of the gauge face

 

[lilpunk1133]

My tach isn't in but i will go take pics...

 

[lilpunk1133]

how in the hell do you post photos...

 

[lilpunk1133]

http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/47/m_12e38d1179354356a891b2110017713d.jpg here u are suprajztwenty

 

[supradrew]

photobucket anyone???

but the teeny tiny little pic i see, it looks cool. i wonder how green would turn out.

how much did that cost you???

 

[lilpunk1133]

http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/47/l_12e38d1179354356a891b2110017713d.jpg this one should be bigger

 

[supradrew]

dude thats fucking awesome! i want green so bad! i just went red because it was what i had lying around and you certainly cant beat free!

ill check out the site, did you just do the 194 bulb swapout (3 of them?) or did you get your own bulbs and do it like me? the cellphone pic isnt cutting it, sorry-it looks badass, but not a lot of detail there

 

[lilpunk1133]

cost 15 dollars shipped to the door...i ordered 8 bulbs.....want a link to the site with the correct bulbs??? U can add these plus what you already have in there..just color change...let me know

 

[lilpunk1133]

Chick not dude......here is the link with the bulbs i used...http://www.superbrightleds.com/specs/bulb_specs.htm

I got the first ones on the page...check it out...

 

[supradrew]

yea i know chick...but dude is what i say... ANYWAYS, cool-but you need more pics.

8 bulbs??? huh? whered you put em all at?

oh-and link is no bueno, ill google it later

 

[lilpunk1133]

LOL um...the wires in the back of the gauges that have little black circles cut out...i will take pics tomorrow to help ya out...they will be better bc it will be daylight...maybe i can photoshop someone elses instrument cluster and draw arrows...give me a few mins

 

[lilpunk1133]

http://partsfinder.onlinemicrofiche...awasaki_OEM/KawasakiMC.asp?Type=13&A=196&B=43

Follow the wires on urs to where these go...then wa-la...bulbs....

 

[supradrew]

to what goes? the link just asks me for year and model then a list of categories to choose from

the wireing isnt a prob-thats what my service manual is for...but did you put the led's in the stock 194 bulb's location?

 

[lilpunk1133]

yea they are the 194 swap outs...and there are eight...four for the actual gauges and four for the indicator lights..u know neutral...turn sigs...oil...and brights....