Instrument Panel Lighting E-body

Has anyone found a brighter - maybe LED bulb that can be substituted for the instrument panel bulbs?

Any recommendations?

Here 's a thread from e-bodies.org with a couple people who have converted them to LED and their sources towards the end of the thread.

https://forum.e-bodies.org/electrical-and-audio/11/i-am-a-be-led-ver/9068/15

https://www.superbrightleds.com/mor...ba9s-led-bulb-1-led-ba9s-retrofit-car/3/

Ba9s, just bought a pack of twenty for everything from instrument panel to overhead to side marker lights. Significantly brighter and no heat to warp lenses.

A39, which color did you use, there are two whites to choose from plus other colors. Also, do they dim?

I did the conversion years ago but I’m sorry to say I lost the list of bulbs used. I can say it’s worth the effort though....

They are actually too bright, but dim to a perfect level.

You have to be careful when picking LED colors if you want to match original light color.
Incandescent bulbs have yellow tint.
I originally bought white LEDs and my dash lights were Blue.
E-bodies have Blue lenses that when combined with the Yellow bulb give a Green color.
I now have Yellow LEDs and now my color matches the Green I wanted.

That is what I am wondering, about the glow. The link from A39 shows you can pick "warm 3200" for white, Then there are colors, green being one of them. I am looking through the specs. but don't see anything about being able to dim them.

Suregrip, if you can maybe look through an old email or something, maybe you could find out what you used?

Wow , Just the brightness I was expecting to see. Thanks everyone.

I would roll the dice on the 3200k as being closest in color. This is on my to do list.
Will wind up being the cheapest thing to do on a rallye gauge conversion I have sitting on the bench..

In another thread, people recommended green LEDs. The pictures provided showed the correct color. That's what I bought but haven't installed them yet.

I kicked around which color I wanted for quite a while but ultimately decided on white so that the color was a true representation of the colored lense. This won't match the way it rolled off the line, but I convinced myself that perhaps the lense was the true intent but the green was an unintended side affect of the incandescent of the time. I may hate it though, still waiting on mine.

Rob, let us know how it works out and which ones you ordered.

In my pic above, I do remember mine were green. You want a wider angle led bulb too. Not one with a narrow focal point. That will give you a bright center with side shadows on your gauges. Remember, led bulbs are directional and shine straight like a flashlight. An incandescent bulb lights up all around the bulb surface. I got my bulbs from https://www.superbrightleds.com/ using the cross reference from numbers off the original bulbs. You also have to measure your old bulbs up to make sure the new ones will fit in the smaller places you need them. Led bulbs tend to run larger in length and diameter. Have that info handy and spend some time on their site finding a suitable bulb that will physically fit.

Key points:

Length of bulb
Width of bulb
Angle ( if needed to shine in the direction desired)
Use the same color bulb for the same color lens it shines through

Sorry to dig this up but I figured I'd share this pic. Here is a comparison between original incandescent bulbs and BA9S white LED behind the blue filter in the dash. Definitely a color difference with the originals being much more green vs the straight blue if the LED. I'd be curious to see how close the yellow LEDs are to the original color. As you could probably imagine there is a fairly substantial temperature difference between the two housings even after on a few minutes.