Dash Lights too dim

[hankthehorrible]

Hello.

Just purchased my 95 HB, and notice that the dash lighs are much dimmer than the heater controls. Both dim with teh control knob, but very disproportional. In fact, the heater controls are almost blinding at night.

Any way to balance them out with a bulb change? ie, lighter heater controls or brighter instrument panel?

Thanks much.

[Miataracer]

hmm... i just went and checked and mine are about even brightness. does your car happen to have some kind of aftermarket gauge faces?

[Plastic_Fork]

Try replacing the guage bulbs - you'll probably have an easier time of that than replacing the climate control bulbs. Not sure what size bulbs your cluster uses though. My Del Sol has about seven of the really tiny bulbs - #74 size. I'd go with factory Honda bulbs though.

Might also want to replace your engine ground wires. Will help brighten your stuff all around - headlights, interior bulbs, etc. Will help it start better as well.

[Miataracer]

yeah the bulbs are the extremely small ones and i am sure they would be easier to change than the ones in the climate control. i dont see a huge need for factory honda ones though as they just buy them from some other company anyway

[Miataracer]

http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=661308

that is talking about how to color your bulbs orange but it still apllies if you want to get in there and change your stock bulbs

[Plastic_Fork]

I changed my gauge bulb color to blue for a while. If you get something brighter, get LED bulbs. The incandescent bulbs suck for illumination. The bulbs Honda uses are good, but just about anything else I tried looked terrible. LED lights are the way to go.

I got mine here:
http://superlumination.com/74.htm

[Plastic_Fork]

Works just fine for me. Give it a sec to load. Or go to the main site:

http://superlumination.com/

[Miataracer]

i clicked a couple times and got an error. it works now. do you have pictures of yours?

[Plastic_Fork]

I'll have to dig them up. It's been a while and my camera is only a 1.5 mp camera so the shots weren't that great. Give me a sec...

[Plastic_Fork]

Ok, here's what they looked like. They really looked a lot better in person, but the blue color of the bulbs really made the red in the gauges rather dim. The red's there, but my camera didn't really pick it up. The blue looked good though. Since the LED's are focused though, it's a good idea to use bulb diffusers like Honda's bulbs use. I bought some that will fit here:

http://www.isspro.com/products.php?cat=11

Here's a couple shots of mine. And changing the climate control lights on a Del Sol really sucks, so to date I still have blue climate control lighting even though I changed back my cluster lights.

[Miataracer]

i was wondering about the whole pointed light thing with the led's. thats exactly why i wanted some pics!

[Miataracer]

that does have a kind of cool effect

[Plastic_Fork]

It looked nice at night, but it makes the red hard to see. If your gauge needles are red, it'll make them pretty tough to see, especially at night. I just wanted something softer at night than the white but still looked nice without me saudering the crap out of my cluster or putting in the indiglo gauges which I consider ugly during the daytime - I liked the stock look better.