I was woundering if anyone has actually done anything like this before? And by everything I mean like Behind the guage cluster, inside the bins, dome light, center console, glove box, front side turn lights, rear tail lights ... so the works ...

All the inside ones will be just a white LED's none of that colorful stuff. I'm Mostly worried about behing the cluster being too bright though. You have 4 x 194 light to light up the whole cluster stuff ... then 12 x 74's for all the warning lights. 74's are also found on the heater speed and temperarute setting *****, the rest I haven't checked just quite yet. Everything can be found on ebay.

The rear tailights I will be doing a custom design as oppose to just changing the bulbs

 

i think it has been done.... try searching the forum, or the rx8 forum, i think the rx8has those LED's in there dome lights... i wouldnt see why it wouldnt work if you changed everything

 

It should work no problem. Just make sure you get the correct kind of bulbs. You have to select the kind that diffuses it's light evenly. The 'regular' kind of LED's will only light up a smaller area, and would look like hot spots in the dash.

I've replaced a few already - like the glovebox, and the bins. I just havent gotten around to doing the rest.

 

My friend ordered LED dome lights from leddomelight.com/, they're really nice, they light up his 240 much better than the OEM bulbs.

 

on my 82 i have these little holes that pop out to get the bolts to the radio tower out. i put some little blue round LED's in those and it looks pritty snazy.

I would not try to hard to switch the ones on you guage cluster the smarter thing to do would be to get an another cluster and make the LED's on that then install that one so if it doesnt work you didnt waste your cluster.

 

I'm stupid, LEDdomelight.com doesn't even carry them for Mazdas.

 

DirectFreak ... would you be able to post up how they look in your car. Thanks for pointing out the whoel diffusion of the light ...never really thought of that . Thats what I was worried about the guage cluster.

 

Huh?

Just use plug-and-play LEDs that are replacements for the same size of standard filament bulbs. There's no "wasting" a cluster - you just change bulbs. If oyu don't like 'em, you pull the LEDs and put back the filament ones.

 

Lol ... ya I just decided to ignore that post ...

Anyways ... I was also woundering are the LED lights compatible with the dimmer switch too?

 

If you have an LED flashlight with old batteries, what happens? The light is a little dimmer than when fresh. So it makes sense that figuring out a way to lower the voltage to the LEDs would also lower light level. I dowbt the stock rheostat will work correctly for this. A simple replacement with a variable resistor might do the trick.

Of course I'm talking about buying your own LEDs and doing the wiring yourself. I don't know what would happen if you got the Manntis-prefered LED 'bulb' type things with a resistor already built into the base which were designed as a direct swap-in replacement for standard incadescent lights.

Well, whatever. Do some research before you jump into this project.