3 dollar cluster light coloring

[enoch723]

Sorry for lack of pictures. Chose to do a write up half way through

So I had a fairly hard time figuring out how to take the cluster off my 1st gen Teg. I had some experience from my 3rd gen accord. They are similar but the tegs screws were more hidden rather then hard to get to like my accord. I wasnt able to get very good pictures of all the screws. Here is a rough outline of the screws that are under.

Dont forget about these two that are behind rubber pads

There are two more on the very top which are very obvious. After you get the screws out it will take some forcing to pull it off the dash. Be careful though about the buttons in the dash. There are all very straight forward to unplug. Unplugging the back of the cluster is too.

So there will be all sorts of lights on the back. The brown ones are for the speedo, gas, so on and so forth. These are the ones you want to turn and pull out carefully.
(Sorry for lack of pictures)

There should be 4 or 5(I dont remember) brown sockets. When you pull them out there will be a blue rubber film over them. Use your finger nail to tear them off. DONT USE A BLADE. The bulbs are old and fragile, I busted one useing a fairly dull knife. Your finger nail works just fine, just be calm and be sure to get as much of the rubber off.

Should look sort of like this when your done.

Now go to the store and pick out the color you want in a sharpie. I wanted blue to match my interior so i got a blue sharpie. Now simply start coloring the bulb. I found starting at the top of the blub and working your way down works really well in making sure to color the whole bulb.

Another good note is to let it "dry" and give it a "second coat" even though it wont actually dry.

Now doing this does make the lights a little dimmer and harder to see, but its hella cheap and hella easy and you can still easily see everything at night.

I will have a picture by tonight about the end result for anyone that wants to see it. I didnt get a before picture though, sorry

 

[Jayteg]

Nothing I like better then DIY, I like this alot and I think I'm gonna try it in my teg thx bro!

 

[FroggerIntegra]

Damn dude hella good idea, I want to replace the light bar at the top of the gauges with LED's, any suggestions?
o and what about the dome light to LED?

 

[enoch723]

Damn dude hella good idea, I want to replace the light bar at the top of the gauges with LED's, any suggestions?
o and what about the dome light to LED?

The light bar on the top is actually just two normal bulbs which is kinda lame. I ended up just coloring them too. For any led conversion your gunna have to get resistors for each led. What i did in my 3g accord a few years ago is got one of those led strips from like auto zone or what ever which are already wired to run off 12v power.
What I did to make it easy, was made the push button that it comes with a toggle that runs off the headlight relay then made the 12v power just run off the lighter. Simple and straight to the point. The hardest part is running the wires everywhere. VERY LITTLE SOLDERING doing it this way but will take a little while longer running all the wires.

As for the dome light, its a project I been thinking of doing for awhile now cause someone ripped the entire wiring and everything out for my dome light.

My idea is getting one of those little solar panels from a garden light or something and wire it to charge a watch battery and you should be able to run 3-5 bright white led's. Idk yet though on all the math of it but it should work no problem. Ill keep you posted if I end up doing it

Thanks guys, glad you like it so much. I always try to keep my projects as simple as possible with as little soldering as possible. Lol

 

[enoch723]

so the end picture was taken on my phone on my way to work today. my camera couldnt see anything cause its a video camera. but you can see that the sun was a little out and that the lights still lit up

 

[klutchDb7]

One suggestion I would make is instead of coloring the bulbs themselves, get some LED replacements for them :thumbs up nice work though

 

[enoch723]

One suggestion I would make is instead of coloring the bulbs themselves, get some LED replacements for them :thumbs up nice work though

I would.. but to find some for a 1st gen integra for cheap? and Im too lazy to wire in my own, too many resistors and stuff.

Thanks for the rep too, Im glad people are actually liking this.

 

[klutchDb7]

They don't need resistors I don't think, unless there's a major difference between our wiring it should be just plug and play I would think for those

 

[FroggerIntegra]

I will look into it

 

[enoch723]

They don't need resistors I don't think, unless there's a major difference between our wiring it should be just plug and play I would think for those

They might.. but Im pretty sure the bulbs run off the standard 12v power. Which isnt a big deal to find resistors, but its the drop rate that always going to be different due to peoples grounding systems. My car specifically has a big chasis ground but normal battery and alternator ground. I get a steady 13v instead of the normal 12.5-12.7