A LED is a LED is a LED.

The fancy smacy expesnvie dimmable ones, are dimmable because they've got something there controlling them. There's two popular ways to dim a LED.

1. Reduce the current going through it, normally by reducing the forward voltage (ie. a pot).
Easy, Cheap, Wasteful (extra electicity is wasted as heat by the reistor)

2. PWM (Pulse Width Modulation), but rapidly flashing the LED (often in the 1000s per sec), you can make the LED appear as bright or dim as possible, by varying the on and off time periods.
Not so easy, Not so cheap, Effiecent.

#1, most LEDs want about 20-25mA to run at a good brightness. Drop that down to 10mA and they'll be dim'ed (note LEDs are not linear, so the dimness won't be half).

A LED that wants a forward voltage of 2.5V (normal for high brightness red/blue/white/green LEDs) running from a 13.8V source (car on), would want a 560Ohm resistor to run it at 20mA. Want to dim it to 10mA use a 1.1KOhm resistor.

Math for you to figur eout what you need for your LEDs.

Vin (Voltage In) = 13.8V
Vf (forward voltage) = 2.5V (or whatever your LED wants)
If (forward current) = 0.020A (=20mA or whatever current you want to run the LED at)

Vin - Vf = Vd (voltage drop)
Vd / If = R (resistance needed on Ohms)

13.8 - 2.5 = 11.3
11.3 / 0.020 = 565
11.3 / 0.010 = 1130
11.3 / 0.025 = 452

The Narva LED replacements, run an 860Ohm resistor, which makes them far to dim (13mA). So I swapped mine with 560Ohm resistors.

have any advancements been made on this dash mod?

ive been workin on school stuff recently with exams and outcomes and s**t, so ive put it on the back burner... ill get round to it later on this year

fair enough

I've been looking into this type of mod. How I'm going about it is to program a PIC micro to read the pulsed signals to the speedo and tacho then control RGB led's to change colors at different speeds and revs. And also start to flash Red on redline and 120+k's.
But at this stage its still a bunch of components stuck in a breadboard.
I think the hardest part will be modding the dash so the colors don't wash over each other.

yeah i though it would be a peice of cake puttin it in, but between hot gluing leds in and stickin circut boards down in the cluster, its becoming one of those "ill do it on the weekend but never get around to doing it" jobs...

you should do this mod man, i likes the idea of it. Although my car never gets near the redline, it'll still be a cool little thing to have on there.

Hope it works in due time!

I'll hopefully be getting a new cluster soon, so may join the work force, if someone wants to help me get up to speed with components/design.

ill email ya some diagrams/part numbers and stuff data_mine, pm me ya address.

im also looking to assemble a team to work out a way of replacing E series door locks to AU, and before you start i know people think it cant be done, but i think it can, so anyone who wants to be part of FM history and do the impossible - sign up!

ryan

I'd love AU locking solenoids.

Although the E series ones sound like you've got some huge bank vault type deadlock being put into place.

PM on it's way.

instead of smartlock it should be vaultlock!

Sounds like it would look preety good....how would you do it????

Sounds like it would look preety good....how would you do it????

whats difference between ef and au locks?

i suggest starting a new thread to deal with the issue of the locks.