I recently purchased my 03 CL-S and suffered from the dim lit gauge cluster as I did when I owned my 03 TL. So I purchased the LEDAutomotive gauge cluster wedge LED's and this is how it turned out:


I was not happy with how awful this looked so I decided to follow Phee and Ontarios DIY with my own flavor. I purchased a LED light strip from Advanced Auto for $30. Without any glue or soldering here is what it looks like now:


What do you think?

 

looks awesome. any night time shots?

 

Not yet. I'll try to get some tonight. My Blackberry doesn't do these pictures any justice. Looks way better in person. Smooth install except for an error on my part. I originally swapped the tach and speedo needles when I reinstalled them(they are different sizes). I damaged the tach in the process and my speedo reads 4mph faster(says I'm going 54 when gps says 51). So I'm going to order a new tach and replace it.

 

 

AWESOME


and that second attempt turned out much better (i still see a couple of hotspots on the speedo, with the KM/H band part, but still , and the imperial system is SO much better anyways...)

 

and forgot to mention, but also just noticed with those strips of LED's, so much less work then doing each one individually lol

 

Looks pretty good. Post some night shots.

 

I purposely kept the paint on the km/h part so it would come out darker. It's not a hotspot.

SO much less work. Like I said, no soldering. I hooked up the ground to a chassis bolt and used a vampire connection for the power at the dimmer switch. The LED's won't dim though.

 

You change your avatar more than I change my socks! lol

Here is the night shot with just the LED wedge bulbs:


I couldn't bare to look at this everyday. So this is what it looks like now. Keep in mind this camera sucks. It makes it seem that 20mph and 140mph are super bright when in reality they are not. The only real spot that is slightly brighter than the rest is the number 9 on the rpm gauge.


Does anyone have a night time pic of the stock gauges? I would like to do a side by side comparison.

 

Are your needles not lighting up?

 

They light up. It's hard to see in the pics. But I would like them to be a little brighter. Anyone have any suggestions? I have spare individual LED's, should I wire one pointing at the center of the needle?

 

Looks pretty good. Definitely want to do this mod, just need to find the time

 

Did you retain brightness control?

 

No. I could when it was the LED bulbs from ledautomitive. But with this light strip it does not dim with the switch. Any idea why? Not a big deal though. It's a perfect brightness.

 

I just finished a complete interior LED conversion. I did the HVAC, clock, select/reset, cruise, and sunroof buttons. I will try and post pics tonight when it gets dark.

 

did you have to modify the guages at all or just lay the led strips inside? if you did modify them, what did you do?

 

I followed Ontarios DIY. He has excellent videos on youtube. I removed the diffusor paint on the backside of the gauge.

 

It looks a bit to bright and needles are to dark. Maybe it looks better in person.
As for seeing it in person you should check our local meet thread in regions section.

 

Link to the DIY? This looks awesome and I want to do it as well.

 

joyfil, couple questions... did you remove the bulbs that were already in there or remove them? also, did you remove the needles? how long did this take you to do?

 

Looks a little to bright in the pics, yes. But in person it looks much better. The gas and temp needles light up perfect. Looks like I may need to add seperate LED's for the rpm and speedo needles to light up a little brighter. I'm in no rush to do that though because it's not that bad at all.

I removed all the factory bulbs. I did remove the needles. Only took a couple of hours to do. I ended up breaking the rpm gauge because I pulled the pin out of the motor. But I ordered a new one from Acura and everything works great now. I even adjusted the speedo to read more acurately.

 

Considering buying a '03 CL-S in the future and this will be the first thing on the mod list as I will miss the LED gauges in the TSX (not selling it) and not liking the dim Amber colored gauges won't help either.

Found his thread, Nersh7. https://acurazine.com/forums/2g-tl-1999-2003-98/instrument-cluster-led-mod-v-4-0-complete-diy-coming-soon-641701/

Sorry to revive and old thread.

 

If anyone wants to throw out the bulb numbers necessary also that'd be cool .

 

Like that a lot. May have to do this mod. Thanks!