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bored of your stock gauge lights?

58K views 316 replies 141 participants last post by  shaw47  
#1 ·
well them rice em up, cause its JDM tizzite!

but serriously if all of you hate normal stock stuff, you'll like this.

how to go from dull
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to sassy!

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first remove your gauge cluster.

to remove, you must lower your steering collum:

but before that you need to remove the dash part below your steering collum, use a large wedged phillips screwdriver to get these baddies off.

then once that trim piece is off or hanging down, time to remove the collum
it has two 12mm nuts and two 12mm bolts, the nuts are the ones on the brace and bolts are on the one nearest to driver.

after those golden nuts/bolts are removed, the whole assembly just falls down, so bearful and set it down gently on your seat for it to rest.

now remove 2 small phillips screws from the top of the trim that holds your vents and buttons, you will also need to pop out the buttons to remove the trim.

now once you have removed the trim take the phillips screwdriver and remove each bolt in left and right corners as well as the one above, they are the only thing holding your cluster in.

side that out and unclip the 3 electric clips for your harness to the cluster and you should have this on the back side, if you don't call a doctor. cause your crazy.

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now have your new colored bulbs ready.

what you need for bulbs is standard #194 bulbs, pick whatever color or xenon you choose, I wen't with blue to match everything else.

you can get them down at autozone in a variety of colors for about 2 bucks for a pack of two.

now replace the stock bulbs with your new bulbs in these palces:
1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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and then put everything back together and your done!

now you are totally JDM! or Totally initial D!
(which ever you prefer)

fun 6 dollar mod, especially if your cluster bulbs are dead.
 
#15 ·
Zefoxe said:
I personally think it looks better/brighter with LED 194s, they're just as cheap as ordinary bulbs but last even longer. The ordinary bulbs tend to lose color too :p
i remember you - AT ftl!! i mean, ftw! lol
 
#19 ·
just go with LEDs (less prone to burning out). I changed mine to blue looks great. make sure to buy the flat headed type LED bulbs not the dome shaped ones. if you get the dome headed bulbs the light is going to be distributed unevenly so when you light up your gauges its gonna look spotty.

total cost me less than 15 bucks if i remember. i also changed dome light, glove compartment little light in ashtray to LED
 
#20 ·
angelthepig said:
just go with LEDs (less prone to burning out). I changed mine to blue looks great. make sure to buy the flat headed type LED bulbs not the dome shaped ones. if you get the dome headed bulbs the light is going to be distributed unevenly so when you light up your gauges its gonna look spotty.

total cost me less than 15 bucks if i remember. i also changed dome light, glove compartment little light in ashtray to LED
way ahead of you bro.
 
#22 ·
^ that is LED 94 wedge bulbs. you can tell because the gauges are brighter in some areas than others. i did the same thing. looks really good. its less noticeable in person than on camera.

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a pic of my old car w/ blue LEDs... best i could do.

if you want to do the LEDs, ebay is the way to do it. shop around though, make sure you get the ones that illuminate a greater area instead of the ones that are really focused on one area.
 
#24 ·
looks white to me? at least compared to the blue lights around it. what color is it usually?

edit: also i just wanna confirm one of the posts above about the advance auto/autozone bulbs losing their color. i tried blue and red from them.

the blue after just a few days turned into like... that ugly ass seafoam green that mid-1990 honda accords came with frmo the factory.

then tried the red and it quickly turned into pink...

LEDs ARE the way to go if you want a bold color.