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I'm working on the cluster in my 79, and I'm having trouble finding what light bulb fits the dash cluster and heater controls. Auto zone lied to me about taillight bulbs so I won't trust them. The only way I found a bulb that worked was out of a junk cluster. Does anyone know off the top of their head what the bulb is, and if there's anything plug and play and brighter? Thanks.
Sylvania's website has them as 194s too. A 194 is basically a 158 but the 158 draws 3.5watts while a 194 draws 5. I borrowed a warning light from my junk fb cluster for my heater panel. I'm guessing that's a 74 too then.
I got my LEDs in today. Jtech is the brand, bought on Amazon for less than $10 shipped. Showed up 2 days after I bought them. One socket was too shallow to accept the LED, so I ended up pulling the contacts back and grinding a bit off the blade part of the LED. Trimmed the contacts a bit and it works fine. Dimmer function doesn't work anymore obviously. Had to experiment with polarity to get them all working, I recommend NOT reconnecting the speedometer until you have them all working. They won't work in blinker indicator sockets either. I liked them, so I bought a pack of Jtech T5 LED bulbs to replace the 74 in the heater control.
Here's a pic for reference, my cluster was so dim before with filament bulbs it wouldn't even show up in photos in my garage.
And for a light color comparison, here's my heater controls with a filament bulb in them.
I got my LEDs in today. Jtech is the brand, bought on Amazon for less than $10 shipped. Showed up 2 days after I bought them. One socket was too shallow to accept the LED, so I ended up pulling the contacts back and grinding a bit off the blade part of the LED. Trimmed the contacts a bit and it works fine. Dimmer function doesn't work anymore obviously. Had to experiment with polarity to get them all working, I recommend NOT reconnecting the speedometer until you have them all working. They won't work in blinker indicator sockets either. I liked them, so I bought a pack of Jtech T5 LED bulbs to replace the 74 in the heater control.
Read the reviews on some of those lights on Amazon, seems like quality is iffy.
Let us know how well they last. I also looked on ebay and you can get similar for
about 1/4 that price but still the quality may be an issue. On ebay you get like
20 bulbs for 5 or 6 bucks + free shipping.
For that price you get one LED 194 bulb at advancedzone made by sylvania
but I'm not sure the quality would be any better. Same with some other sights
like brightlights etc. They all look like the same bulbs.
Read the reviews on some of those lights on Amazon, seems like quality is iffy.
Let us know how well they last. I also looked on ebay and you can get similar for
about 1/4 that price but still the quality may be an issue. On ebay you get like
20 bulbs for 5 or 6 bucks + free shipping.
For that price you get one LED 194 bulb at advancedzone made by sylvania
but I'm not sure the quality would be any better. Same with some other sights
like brightlights etc. They all look like the same bulbs.
For $6 I may just order the ebay ones to play with and see how they go.
My understanding of LED is that it's solid state, I feel like the reviews saying they dim after a while are pretty subjective. And the one about the plastic cracking from heat doesn't make sense to me, they run cooler than filament bulbs. But I have 4 spares to replace any that break, and at a negligible cost. I wouldn't pay $20 a pop for sylvania LED bulbs, when they're probably just marked up and repacked cheapies. For the price, you can't go wrong.
02-08-16, 01:55 PM
