Hi!

This guide is about replacing the regular lights with, in this case, blue LEDs.
YES you can use T10 lights in all shapes, sizes and colours in stead of using LEDs but here are some advantages:
- you can get virtually any colour
- cheaper than T10 lights
- lightspread is way better
- it's more fun because you're DIY'ing

You need the following:
- Soldering iron + soldering tin
- LEDs + resistors
- heatshrink
- (thin) copper wire
- Screwdrivers, pliers, etc
- a 1mm drill + powerdrill
- patience and craftsmanship

LEDs can be bought at various places including ebay.
I used 5mm 120degrees blue LEDs.
The more degrees, the better the light spreads over the gauges.



unfortunately, i was using an el cheapo camera so some of the pictures are not as clear as i wanted. read the text carefully and you'll understand.

Begin by removing the sidepanel on the drivers' side of the car. ofcourse I have a european BA so UK members should do everything in reversed image.



After that remove the 2 screws that now show up and the panel below the steering wheel should come loose. remove this one, remove the 2 screws to the left and the right of the steering wheel.

Next remove the center console by removing 2 screws on the side (see arrows), and gently pulling the center console up. be carefull not to break the clips (circles)



Next you're gonna remove the large gauge console. it sits in place with holding clips so gently pull the console towards you and it should come loose. next remove the 4 screws holding the gauges in place. be carefull not to pull hard because you still need to undo the 3 connectors on the rear of the gauges.

If you did everything right you should be holding this:



before touching anything make sure to take a picture of the gas gauge. if you move it, it won't go back to its original position, so take a picture and save yourself a lot of headache.

on the rear side of the panel you can find these light fittings:



3 green ones for the gauge lights, 2 black ones for the indicators, and 1 black one for your gas warning light.
twist these and they will come out. you can now choose the easy way and fit T10 bulbs. otherwise, continue reading.

First we need to prepare the LEDs. I used 2 LEDs per fitting as this gives you more than enough light on the gauges. take 2 LEDs, put them next to eachother and bend the negative leg of 1 LED and the positive leg of the other LED towards eachother:



Now solder these legs together and cut off the remaining part:



Now take a resistor and cut it in a way that it resembles the length of the other leg:



Solder the resistor to the leg of the LED and cut 2 pieces of heatshrink, both long enough to cover the length of the resistor:



now repeat 2 times if you only want the background lights to be blue, and 4 times if you want to change the indicator lights as well.

take the 1mm drill and drill 2 holes from the inside of the fitting towards the back:




now push both legs of the LEDs you just created through the holes, from the inside towards the back and bend the legs sideways:



now screw the fitting back into place and jam 2 pieces of wire between the contactpoints of the fitting and the print assembly. make sure to first follow each print lane to determine if its a positive or a negative lane:



now you can solder wire between all the positive legs of the LEDs and the negative legs of the LEDs and connect them to the wires running to the print assembly.

eventually it should look like this:



Please only notice the green lined part.

if you don't want to change the colour of your indicators, you can mount the gauge back into place and put the connectors on the rear side back in. you can test your LEDs by putting a negative and a positive wire from a battery onto the following points:



if your LEDs aren't working, check your soldering and make sure you connected the positive side of the LEDs to the positive power source and the same for the negative legs.

if you want blue indicator lights, continue reading.

follow the same procedure to fit LEDs in the 2 black fittings for the indicators. this time you don't need to stuff a wire between the contact points and the print assembly because there's 2 points to get your power from.



these points can be used to power the LEDs for the indicators. make sure you pick the correct side otherwise the left LED will burn when turning right etc. follow the print lanes to be sure.



now solder the negative legs of the LEDs together and cover your soldering work with either tape or heatshrink:



Next up you have to take the gauge panel apart to remove the green lenses. not removing these will cause the light to become this which is quite ugly. remove the lens and cover it with non-transparant adhesive tape:



Make sure to use non-transparant. transparant tape will cause the LED to shine directly into your eye which is not desireable.

put everything back together and it should look like this:



you can see that i messed up the tape and got some air between 2 layers, got it right on the 2nd try.

again, before mounting the gauge pod make sure everything works by putting a negative and a positive wire from a battery on the contact points. be carefull not to pull any wires apart when fitting the gauge pod in the dashboard.

Final result:




using green LEDs:




but ofcourse you can use any colour LED you want.

nice guide....

sorry for the worst english you ever came across but i did my best
feel free to check and alter spelling.

Really nice guide, and all credit to you, but...



why not just use T10 led bulbs? Like:

http://www.club323f.com/?page_id=162 - Interior - Dash Light Replacement.

they're more expensive, have worse light distribution and worse build quality.
my experience with those things is that they break easily or burn out, that's why i used LEDs

I'd have mixed it up, like the inner circle in red, and the speed digits in green and the pointers red...

none the less, this is quite interesting, I just put in some T10's... Then again I've got plasma dials
in the 1.8...

plasma dials like!
i've got white gauges with blue dials

also you can do some fun things with multicolor leds..

Sadly this won't work, I recently got hold of a spare set of dials and shone a light through each hole indivdually, its pretty much one for the left, one for the middle and one from the right, puts the kybosh right on my plan

I like all the soldering there because it looks good and I can't do it which is why I'll be using LED 501s with 0.5-1.0 watt SMTs

Don't forget you can change all the switch lights to T3 LEDs too

Question!
Im about to do this.. but, in order to get a nice color come through the instrument cluster is there any green film u need to remove from the back of the dials?

Im changing my instruments to white FYI

Question!
Im about to do this.. but, in order to get a nice color come through the instrument cluster is there any green film u need to remove from the back of the dials?

Im changing my instruments to white FYI

Look at the pictures, the bulbs themselves have green cover on them...




Edit

I used these... and plasma dials...




Not the best picture of it... green needle and center... However I used one for the fuel gauge,
and because it reads in voltage the OMFG I've got no fuel light is on...

hello, I am thinking of changing the dashboard lights of my 323f 1998. I have never opened any part of any car before. I may sound a little silly, but can you please tell me will T5 LED's fit in the dashboard and speedo?? and will I have to connect the resistors as well or can I just replace them??
Thanks

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-x-T5-286-1 ... 412wt_1163

or can someone tell me which bulbs or LED's to look for?? Just like I mentioned T5.
As I am not in UK and Finland is way too expensive in everything, so I will be buying them from ebay. so can you please help me out? T5 or T10 or something else that can be simply replaced and have a good light.
cheers

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=T ... m270.l1313

pick one from this list, as long as they're T10 you're fine.

thanks mate
I have bought 10 blue and 10 white LED bulbs:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10x-LED-Side- ... 1769wt_952

and

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-10-x-5-SM ... 3731wt_952

I didn't knew how much bulbs will be required, so I bought a total of 20. But any ideas how will the dashboard and speedo look better? which bulbs should be blue and which should be white? Specially in speedo, is it possibble to have the dial and needles in different colours?
Thanks again for helping me.
Cheers

and 10 of these as well

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 4179wt_952

hehe.. I'm a bit confused and don't wana run short of LED's when I open the dashboard

You only need 3 for the main gauge cluster

Unfortunately, the same bulbs light up the needles and the gauges. You could scrape the white from the back of the needles, then paint the back red, so your needles would be red for example

There is also a green layer on the back of the gauges, so white LEDs will still be a bit green. Doesn't really matter too much if you use blue/red/green bulbs, but will be noticable using white bulbs. You can sand the green off using fine sandpaper though (don't sand off too much though else the light will bleed through!)

if you have time, patience and knowledge, you could do fun stuff like this:



this is actually not that difficult.

Thanks mate

wow!! that looks awesum
Well, I have patience (thats probably the only thing I've learnt in my bachelors degree ), I can get time as well, but how did you do that???? Which LED's did you used? Actually the problem is that since I've moved to Finland, I'm having real difficulties in finding things and the only way to get them is ebay
And now I've got to know the value of UK.. hehe :P
Can you please throw some light on how did you do that? As this is the first time in my life I'm going to do stuff on car myself, I should've had looked how my brother used to modify his car (And I just used to enjoy the ready to drive modified cars)

Cheers

wasn't my mod
but all you need are these LEDs:

http://www.leds-buy.nl/3-pin-duo-led-bl ... n-5mm.html (beware, dutch site)

+ my tutorial
as you can see, the red and blue light shine in a particular way. by mounting the LEDs in the right way, you can specify which light goes where

i'm going to do this mod myself in a while, still need to find an instrument cluster which fits my needs.

thanks mate
I wonder why on ebay there are no multicolor LEDs? or why I didn't saw any!!
And Good Luck with your mod. And do share when you are done with it.
For me it might take some time to do this, as I haven't received any of the products that I've bought.

I'll be changing the dash colors and also painting the front brake calipers and rear brake drums. i hope the latter part goes well

i've found 3mm leds on ebay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-pcs-3mm-Dual ... 842wt_1163

but you want 5mm.

i might be able to ship a bunch to you in a while

Thankss alot mate Let me know when you get them and I'll send you the payment if I need them

However can you or someone tell me how to buy or from where to buy the headlight covers of 323f 1998?? I've been trying to find them on ebay but no success
And really would like to have them...

those plastic headlight covers? those are extremely rare, doesnt suprise me that those arent on ebay. they appear on the For Sale section on this forum sometimes but they go fast & expensive.

Yeah I got the idea while searching for them on net

someone can do the scheme with more info and alternative right??

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=220639937104&index=8&nav=SEARCH&nid=01760010651

Will these fit or not??

yes they will

Has anybody used T10 leds that are really bright? Ι installed some T10 red leds just to make my needles shine red (have an indiglo speedo) but the light they produce is crappy. So I need some red leds that can really lighten my needles! Any suggestions?