Ok did the LEDs u bought from eBay work or did u hAve to buy from the website?

 

i used both.

i used some of the bare LED's that i had purchased off ebay. i also used some extra LED's that i purchased off that website.

next time i'm in FL with my car (it's parked down there for the winter) i'll pull the cluster and take some more pics.

 

any chance we can make this a sticky for the interior section?

 

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...=commander+LED

I tried and it failed miserably. They are so incredibly small...

The common thing is to do an EL panel, which I don't like as the color isn't all that saturated.

 

9 year bump from the grave....

Just kicking around ideas for getting this done but possibly using things that are available now in 2019. Two ideas...
1) A thin 12v LED strip off amazon would fit in the cluster and you could essentially route it however you'd want. You can cut them to length so you buy a long one and just trim to the desired length. Looks like it would be pretty easy to super glue inside the housing. You get 1 LED per inch I think. Not sure if they'd be dimmable.

2) Has anyone tried building little reflector cones (like a dog neuter cone) around the newly installed LED bulbs that people having been retrofitting? The idea here would be to take directed light and reflect more of it upward. I know someone said they tried tin foil on the inside of the housing but I don't think that would be as effective because the housing gets covered by parts of the electrical board too. A reflective cone that sticks up a bit might be better.

 

Back in the day I tried a rope light similar to what you're talking about, in addition to the LED bulbs in the regular locations. It wasn't too bad, but not perfect. I think with Speedhut being such a popular option these days, I doubt many are looking into doing this anymore. Although it would be good to have a solution if someone wanted to keep the stock gauges. I think at one point I tried some cloudy type paper on the back of the clear plastic behind the gauges, kinda like wax paper, to help dissipate the light. But I don't remember if I ever actually did it or just had the idea. I swapped to Speedhut gauges about six years ago already.

 

Thanks for the response. I've not heard of them before. Are they bolt in? I'm assuming you're talking about these?
https://www.speedhut.com/gaugedesign/3286235516

 

Yep, those are the ones. They're not bolt in, they require a good bit of work but I believe they're worth it in the end. Broadfield Customs also builds a setup for FDs if you'd rather pay someone to do it, and he does beautiful work. I did mine myself, and added a couple SPA dual gauges. I'm not crazy about having digital and analog mixed, but at least I have all the info there within the stock hood, aside from the boost gauge, which is on the steering column using a Drakes pod. Shane Drake 3D prints a bunch of interior parts for the FD and he's always innovating. He's been working on replacement plastics that Mazda no longer makes and his are reinforced. I love my column pod.

Broadfield Customs ? Custom Clusters & More
https://www.draklore.com/

 

Very nice!

I'm with you on having digital mixed in. For me, having fuel, speedo, tach, boost, and water temp is critical. Other than that, I don't need much else in my line of sight. The speed hut ones look great. If I decide to go through with it, I might give that a go!

 

Thanks! I've thought about trying to swap those to analog too, but with it already being finished and I can't find analog gauges that will show me dual readings, I'm not sure it'll ever happen haha. I like having fuel pressure and oil temp and pressure readings in my view also. Although admittedly I don't really look at any of the gauges all that much haha. I'll look at them occasionally when I'm just cruising or something, but not when I'm WOT.

Speedhut makes a speedo that will have another gauge with it too, but they can't do the mod for cruise control AND a dual gauge in it. Which brings up another point...if you get rid of the stock gauges you'll lose cruise control too (if you have it in the first place), but now Speedhut can modify the speedo to have a square wave output which is what the stock system needs to see for cruise. And that modification is only $20. For several years I was looking for a way to get cruise control back, it's nice finally having it again.

 

I just spoke with them recently and was told for $20-25, I can send them my dual GPS speedo and they can add the cruise square-wave output. I had originally posted a while back that the duals did not allow for it, but this seems to have changed apparently.

 

WHAT?! That must have JUST changed because I just had my gauges redone about six months ago. Damn.

 

That’s what I said! I asked if it was a new change/capability, and they said yes.

 

Welp, I guess I'll be sending them back in to get some stuff added. LOL Nah, I think I like them as they are.

Speaking of, I found a much better pic of them lit up.

 

Yo, check your battery charge!

 

And oil pressure! lol

 

Looking good! What night font is that?

 

Thanks! The color you mean? Or the actual font. The color is Cobalt Blue, the font for the numbers is the common Eurostile option and the RX-7 logo I just told them to use the Mazda version of it. I used to have the turbo rotor part of the old RX7club.com stickers as a logo on the tach, and RX-7 in just a regular font on the speedo, but I didn't care for it as much. I like this much better.

I wish they were a little brighter. I hooked them up to the dimmer switch but maybe I got the wrong wires or something, because it doesn't change with the switch.

 

Okay, cobalt blue. Nice! Can't remember what version of blue I chose for mine. I'll know soon enough once Toby gets done w the cluster. But I do like the subtle nature of yours.

Do you mean the stock dimmer switch or the one supplied by SH? I vaguely recall a thread somewhere mentioning a batch of bad inverters being sent out, which was affecting the ability to dim the gauge lights effectively.

 

I wired mine to the stock dimmer switch. Maybe I'll just get one of their switches.

 

^ Looking good. As for the brightness of the SpeedHut gauges, I assume you have them all wired up to the one inverter that they include with the gauge kit? If so, you will need to get them to send you two more. Wire one to the speedo, one to the tachometer, and the other to the fuel gauge and two other digital gauges. That will make them all as bright as possible.

For each gauge you connect to the one inverter, you lose some brightness, so by the time you hook them all up, they get pretty dim. Check out what I mean by hooking up only the speedo and see the result. I had to use three inverters for all of 5 my gauges. I also cut off the one dimmer switch they supply as I will only use the brightest setting and I didn't want anything else tucked under the dash.

 

Oh ****, I never thought of that. Yeah I'm using just one inverter. So I could get an inverter for each gauge but use one dimmer switch? Would that be possible you think? I don't need them A LOT brighter, just a bit, but if I could have the option of them being very bright and dimmable, that would be best. I kinda like having them a bit more dim so it's not blinding at night, but they're on the verge of being not visible enough.

Thanks David! That clears up everything haha.

 

^ yes, you can wire up all three inverters to one dimmer switch. That is how I originally had mine wired up. I then noted I needed to keep mine on 100% dimmer switch, so to clean up the wiring, I removed the dimmer switch.

My biggest issue with brightness is my font color is red, the LED color that takes the most power to illuminate. So, I had to go 100% to make mine illuminate properly. For your blue LEDs, you can play around with the dimmer switch to see what setting works the best for you. If it is less than 100%, leave the switch.

Make sure to use one inverter for the speedo and one for the tachometer as these are larger gauges and they have more surface area OLED illumination to drive.

PM me with any questions - David