Hi Guys,

My LEDs finally arrived and i was quite excited to get rid of the yellowy/orangy piss coloured lights i had accross my dials. So as i have read a few threads here asking how to do it and if its the same as the Skyline installation i decided to make a little tutorial to clear and unknowns.








Step 1. Removing steering column surround
This not a totally nessesary step but it certainly helps to have more room aroun
 the area. Underneith the cover there is 6 screws
on the cover it self which you can see here marked in RED from 1 - 6 in the pic below. Once all the screws are apart the top and bottom can be pulled away from each other do not be supprised it they don't fall off each other they are clicked together. a bit of light manipulation will get them apart. Also make sure to hold onto the small ring around the ignition... mine flew off and rolled away for awhile haha






Step 2. Gauge surround removal
The next step is to remove the plastic surround that is around the gauge cluster abo
t the steering column. To do this you will 
need to remove the two screws under the dash next to the steering column, show i
 the picture above marked in BLUE as 1 and 2.
(mine looks a little funny as that is where my AVCR is mounted with a bracket) Once these are removed you can remove the two screws from up under the dash near the front of the gauges. They are shown in the pic below and are marked in RED as 1 and 2.




Now with one hand on either side of the steering column you will need to pull towards you in order to detatch the bottom of the surround from the jesus clips that are holding em in. (See pic below)



The surround is now free of the dash, but clearly this particular part was put in before things like steering wheels and stalks were put in during manufacturing so a little bit of gusto is needed to get the sucker out. What i found worked best was to try and it the surround out by pulling straight towards you and pushing down a little in the middle so it clears the recess that is was in. Don't worry with a little bit of muscle grit your teeth a bit and it will come out. BTW if you took the car to a professional auto elec or something to get this done im sure this is the exact way he would do it... accept he probably wouldn't care as much.

Once you have cleared the surround from the dash you will need to reach behind and disconnect the plugs for the climate control sensor etc that is located on the left and right. Below in the pic you will see what needs to be removed. These clips are your standard full pain in the arse bastards to get out but they will come out thankfully they are 10x easier to put back in.



Okay that was the hard part out of the way if you have come this far keep going!!


Step 3 Removing gauge cluster and installing LEDs
Now to remove the cluster and get the bulbs in! To remove the gauge cluster itself there is 4 srews holding the acutal unit in show in picture below marked in RED from 1-4.



With the screws removed the cluster should move reasonably freely, as there is a good amount of room behind the unit. Now to get the plugs at the back, move the unit over the the right slightly and push the right side back towards the bonnet, be careful not to scratch the leather look dash with the white screw holders. From here you should have access to the back as seen in the pic below.



At the back of the cluster there is 3 plugs each is held in pretty firmly try not to use and tools to free them from there sockets as you could cause damage easily. If you need to use a flat head screw driver make sure you rap it well in electrical tape first. The first step is to clip off the cable tie that is holding the wires to the back of the unit. Once this is removed you will have a bit more play and should be able to get the plugs out easily enough. In the picture below the plugs are marked in Green boxes.



Now that the cluster is out you can remove the bulbs from the back, simply twist them and they will come out SIMPLE. There are lots of bulbs in the back as you can see but we are really only interested in the ones marked from 1-5 number 6 is the fuel light which as i had a spare bulb decided to put in there. Yours may be slightly different depending on if its an Automatic or not. Mine is a manual as you can see there are no bulbs in the center line where the 123RDNP etc would normally be. The easiest way to tell if the bulb you are removing is to illuminate the gauges when you hold the unit up to a light/sun you will see pretty much nothing, on the other hand if you have removed a bulb of an indicator light when you hold it up to the sun you will see the icon. Simple. If you wish you can replace all the bulbs... but i still like warning lights etc to be red and orange etc.

To remove the blubs from the holders it is simply a matter of pulling them out. They should pull out no worries if they are really stuck in there you can use pliars but again make sure to use some tape over them, if you 
hought they were hard to get out intact try getting one out that broken!



Well that is pretty much it, now you just have to put it all back together again!!

I have also done my center guage cluster but i forgot to take photos during the process but if you have any problems give me a yell and ill help you out as much as i can. Below are the results of my work and i have to say im not particularly happy with the way the gauges came out... They are very dim and can hardly be seen i'd say about half the brightness of the orginal bulbs. I have seen pictures of guys skylines with them in and they look tops really bright!! I also did the center cluster ones first so as you can see from the pics they are bright as and look fantastic. I also connected up the light in my Greddy guage as it was just hanging and i put some LEDs in there too. It Also looks kickarse! just the guages that shit me you guys might have more luck, i know I am ragging something i just did myself but if you are so inclinded to change yours over or they some of your bulbs have blown or something the tutorial should help

Cheers guys

Register on the forums for fewer ads.

where did you get your LEDs from and how much?

I would probably do the guages ones as they are very dim. Can hardly see it. I will leave the speedo guages as mine is the dolphin one but will see how it goes first.

Well the guage ones are very simple to do you just need to remove the center consol frame and there is 3 blue bulb holders at the back of the guages. The LEDs are only a few bucks each each i think from memory i got them from 666DAN if you PM him he should be able to organise them for you. Hey can you take some snaps of the your dophine gauges? Day and night? id be very interested to see what they are like.
Cheers

Do you want to post me your stock dash globes or are they all broken?

howcome the photos arnt showing? can u post again pls

Nice work, Paul.

Stickied in the Stagea DIY section...

i will try to snap a few pics over the weekend. How many bulbs did you get and what type? Are they the wide angled ones?

Can you doub;e check on the forum member user name who sold the LEDs to ypu. Tried pming him but it says error. Thanks

yudy

Hey Guys,

Alexcim - my bulbs are not broken but i may be putting them back in as the gauge cluster is just too dull. I have spoken with 666Dan and he has told me that certain clusters have a type of filter on the back of them, designed most likly to only allow one colour through so as the stock globes are a reasonably uniform orange colour. When you try and pump blue light through this filter its trying its hardest to not let the colour through so hence the reason for the light guages. But im going to look into it more and pull the whole unit apart and see what i can do. The standard halogen globes are not all that expensive, im pretty sure you could buy a packet at autobarn or supercheap.

MyR3408 - Sorry about the pictures they are hosted on a yahoo storage which only allows for a certain ammount of traffic and obviously the traffic was exceeded. They are working now though, if you find them not working again just check back another time cheers

Goldzilla - Thanks for the Sticky DIY mate glad to help out other:)

Statis - The globes were purchased off 666Dan sorry if i got the name around the wrong way. okay the bulbs i bought were as follows;


A/C Unit
- 2 x T5 multi direction/3 LED bulbs (the one you can see in the bulb holder in the DIY) These i used in the LCD of the A/C
- 4 x T1.5 Single LED bulbs (smaller and as you can see in the pics the A/C buttons are not very bright. But still great!

3 Guage Cluster
- 3 x T5 Multi direction/3 LED Bulbs (These look UNREAL! just a note though if you still want your needles to look RED and not pink i suggest buying some good qualtiy RED neon paint and painting the needles or else they will be pink like mine...)

Ciggi Lighter
- 1 x T5 Multi direction/3 LED Bulb

Boost gauge
- 2 x T5 Multi direction/3 LED Bulb (Please not that this is an aftermarket product and i suggest if you have a A/M boost guage or any guage for that matter that you pull it appart and check the size of the bulb)

Main Gauge Cluster
- 5 x T5 Multi direction/3 LED Bulb (PLEASE NOTE!! for some reason probably different location of manufacture the guage clusters can be quite different to one another. I would suggest; If you are planning on doing the whole kit and caboodle center consol included, i would buy the right amount to suit just the centerconlos/AC first! Use the globes you get for that and put them into your main gauge cluster. If you are happy with the results leave them in there and order some more for your center consol. If you are not simply put back your old globes put the new LEDs where they were planned for and you have lost nothing.

Please do not take my advice as sacrilege as it is just what it is and thats ADVICE! Take it or leave it

Cheers Peeps

ok thanks man probably we should meet up man. friday afternoon is always good. only fridays though.

Yeah no worries, i have been sick for the last 2 weekends though so my stereo install keeps getting put on hold while i try and get better... but friday evening is probably the best time for me two. Id like to go for a drive in another stag as a bit of a comparison.

Will let you know next week what my movments are

Cheers

Recently did this to my S1 only I used 666DAN's Red LED's and they're very faint as well as very patchy, I think this comes back to the instruments having a blue contact layer applied to them which can't be removed. I can say however that the cigarette lighter socket works well with a red LED.

In conclusion these LED's are really only good for small things in Stageas like gauges, climate controls and cigarette lighter sockets.

As much as these things seem like a good simple upgrade i have found them to be very weak. I think all bar maybe 2 or 3 of the LEDs i have put in my car have burned out/broken/stopped working. And i bought the parkers, internal light, all dash, all center consol. So a good 10 bulbs have died. I know dan has some newer bulbs which may be better but i have found the old ones to be just too unreliable.

hi trying to get 666dan to see if he can supply some White LEDs for my a.c and cig, I've left a few messages for him! Is he on hols??

hopefully there is a restisor in with the LED, if there isnt, thats the problem with them burning out. OR the resistor isnt the correct value