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.

 

I think they are just 194 mini bulbs but I'm not sure yet. I'm thinking about getting LED ones to replace all of for a brighter light.

 

Just checked my spare Cluster. 158 for the illumination and 74 for the warning lights. Not sure about the heater.

 

Yep, my 194 guess was off for sure.

 

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.

 

Interesting to know, so the 194 led replacements would probably work just fine.

 

Here's the description on the LEDs I bought.

Direct replacement for all T10 Wedge Type W5W, 147, 152, 158, 159, 161, 168, 184, 192, 193, 194 2825.

 

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.

 

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.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20x-T10-LED-...dVyAm1&vxp=mtr


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.

 

Here's a decent comparison of light levels. I got the one in my heater panel today.

Old bulb


LED bulb






On a side note, is there an easy way to buff that Plexiglas panel out?

 

Panel comes out separately. Some muscle and a good plastic polish should do it...

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

I did this a couple years ago. I'm still thinking of a way to make the red in the needles better. Here are my LEDs.

 

Damn that looks nice! What kind of LED did you use?

 

White Pilot brand from Advance. 194. I experimented with removing the blue covers too. No covers is much brighter, but doesn't look as nice.