FAQ: Interior Lighting Questions (Dash/Guage Color)

Did you check continuity on all fuses? Sometimes they look okay when they're blown.

almost all of my fuses are those light up ones that glow when they blow. are those known to not work ever?

i replaced every minifuse in the car. still nothing

well i've finally gotten around to redoing those lights for the doors. It was a little more work than i had hoped but it seems to have worked out well.

The light in the door handle channel and the one thats inside the pull handle for the door had been out on the driver side since i got the car. They are not sold at the dealer anymore. I have ass loads of LED's so I used a couple to replace the bulbs with. They didn't work too well on the upper handle so I'm going to just use the OEM bulbs on that but the bottom handle with these LED's works excellent. Some major porting was necessary to make the ironically larger LED fit into the socket and diffuser.

I'll get some pics posted shortly...

original upper light with out diffuser

LED installed onto socket

wow. looks good.

To get the LED up through the black connector did you drill it out or do you have exceptional soldering skills??

allfalldown wrote:

To get the LED up through the black connector did you drill it out or do you have exceptional soldering skills??

just so you know I typed a response to this last night when i was drunk so i should probably be glad it didn't work then. that would have been interesting to read.

What you do is pull the little bulb off and basically rip the wires out of the plastic socket so you have a bare socket. then modification to the socket will need to be made (through drilling) to accommodate the LED and I would highly recommend soldering and heat shrinking the LED to your connector / wire.

If its one of the big LEDs like I got, drilling the socket is crucial because the LED needs to fit into the socket in order to clear the diffuser that covers it once its on the car. after all said and done, about 1/3 of my LED is hidden in the socket. If you find a smaller LED that will work, you may be able to just glue the wires/bulb to the socket like the OEM ones are but that size LED is hard to find suitable for this application.

If you do this, keep in mind that you definitely want to get automotive (12v) LEDs and no other kind. Otherwise you will have to do some tricks and math with a resistor to make it work.

turtleman wrote:

allfalldown wrote:

To get the LED up through the black connector did you drill it out or do you have exceptional soldering skills??

just so you know I typed a response to this last night when i was drunk so i should probably be glad it didn't work then. that would have been interesting to read.

Been there before. Always good not to go near the computer when you get home after a night of drinks. hah

Thanks for that response. I should know tomorrow if I ordered the right part replacements (the whole thing, wire, bulb, connector).

I'm doubtful but I spoke to the rep on the phone and he held it in his hand as I described it!

a friend of mine just gave me a dash cluster out of a 96+ riv.
i am trying to replace the bulbs with either brighter ones or blue LED's.
anyone have any cool idea's for an experiment? i thought about painting the area around the gauges but i dont know if it would look good with my wood dash.

also i just found out we have a "change oil soon" light but no bulb for it....is there a sensor on out cars that reads the viscosity/color of the oil, or a mileage counter? (maybe i just never let mine go that far)
do our cars come set up with that feature? why else would it be on the dash? i dont think we have the same cluster parts as any other cars.
also we have a "brake to shift" light which is GREEN! but i have never seen mine come on. why is that?
if anyone needs a new dash cluster i would be more than happy to reassemble it and sent it to you, im just using it to experiment on right now.

oh, and if i plug up a different dash would the odo read what my car has on it, or what the other car had on it? can our pcms recognize the swap or would i need to take ti to the dealer to recalibrate it?
TIA
Matthew
here is the regalgs link to changing the colors for those who havent seen it yet.

http://www.regalgs.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34053&highlight=dash

I think those lights are optional features that were never used, or were used in early models and discontinued. I've read that the "brake to shift" light came on when you started the engine in '95 models, to tell you how to put the car into gear. In theory, someone might not have their foot on the brake and wonder why the shifter won't move. Buick must've realized the redundancy and removed it for '96.

the stupid euro cars have that "feature". like the BMW's, Audi's, and VW's all have a yellow light of a foot that stays on until you touch the brake, then you can change gear. you can't even drop it from N to D without touching the brake. very annoying for valets and car wash employs

Mr.Riviera wrote:

also we have a "brake to shift" light which is GREEN! but i have never seen mine come on. why is that?

AA wrote:

I've read that the "brake to shift" light came on when you started the engine in '95 models, to tell you how to put the car into gear. In theory, someone might not have their foot on the brake and wonder why the shifter won't move. Buick must've realized the redundancy and removed it for '96.

It comes on in my '95 and doesn't in the '99, I just kind of figured the bulb was burned out in the '99.
Good to know that it isn't supposed to work on '96 and newer, save me the trouble of changing it in the Silver Arrow.

I played around and changed mine to blue at one time. Just as it was stated in the thread, the blue looked pretty dark. Darker than the picture showed and the green stood out and made the car look dated IMO. I switched it back soon after. Not only is the OD green but all the temp controls and the stock radio. It just looked out of place with blue gauges. Wish it would have worked.

I kinda like the Borg green, especially since I'm getting so much evil black in the interior with the dash kit. But an energetic orange yellow would fit the color scheme too and the more athletic nature of the modded car.

too bad i cant make it look like this cluster. how sweet would this color scheme be?

im sure you could make it some what like the gto's a custom guage overlay with white bulbs to difuse the colors that way did it when i had my hayabusa not that hard . The only thing is the shifter and od would be green. Could change it imsure with alittle careful electronics.

I love the blue lights. I hate the green.

I like the GTOs but I wouldn't put red in my Riv. Just the white and blue.

The cluster bulbs have the little bluish rubber tint sheet on it. If you take it off, the resulting color is an even less attractive yellowish color because it seems the numbers and stuff on the gauges have some tint naturally and the blue sheet on the bulbs correct it so it's green. The result of all this is not much can be done to change it. I haven't tried taking apart the cluster beyond the rear circuit board to investigate further.

I can give you the part number for a brighter, higher wattage halogen bulb that will pretty much be a direct replacement to the 194 stock bulb but it's actually a tad bit smaller capsule than the 194 so the little tint sheet won't fit on it so it will definitely be a pissy yellow color. I haven't tried using LED's though. I think i'll rip apart my extra 98 cluster farther and investigate some more

to answer your question about the odometer, matthew, the numbers stay with the cluster. It will read the miles from whatever riv it cam out of.

do you have a wire diagram so i can hook up a 12v bat to it and have it show the mileage?
i got some 168 bulbs which are like 1watt brighter than 194's, but i couldnt see the difference.
the LED's will work but they must be ordered and cost a bit more. i didnt feel like paying any more to just experiment.

quote: "to answer your question about the odometer, matthew, the numbers stay with the cluster. It will read the miles from whatever riv it cam out of."

Thanks for the info, good to know!

LEDs don't have the characteristic of unidirectional light, like a standard bulb. My fear with those is that the light will spotlight onto a section of the the gauges rather than fill them with even light which ain't cool

they make a wide LED that will help disperse the light in all directions. it seemed to work for some others in the regalgs community.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/194-168-5-LED-Lights-Blue-2-Bulbs-Wide-View-Angle-Best_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ33713QQihZ001QQitemZ110167043016QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW

how many LEDS do i need to change over almost all the lights in the car. i for a 20 set om ebay for 9 bucks

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200185858840&ssPageName=MERC_VI_RCRX_Pr12_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT&refitem=200185684150&itemcount=12&refwidgetloc=active_view_item&usedrule1=CrossSell_LogicX&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget

i have some questions tho,

dose the MPH use the same LED ans the needle and the KPH

how many LED will i need to do the full conversion

has any one found a way to do the miles and or the gear change or the temp on the HVAC

what color should i do red or white

how long should this take

what bulb numbers do i need to order,

i tried to join regale GS but i said blocked IP

any help would be great