Started the dash light project this evening. After finding the rear wiper/washer bulb burnt out I decided to try replacing all the peanut bulbs with LEDs. Pleased with the results so far.

The rear wiper bulb was soldered in; the headlight switch uses a twist type. Disassembled it, inserted the LED and reassembled. Had to shorten the stalk on the bulb holder as the LEDs I purchased are 5mm long, but it's plenty bright even so.

We'll see how the rest of them go.

 

Pieces and parts.

 

Definitely a great mod getting rid of all the nasty yellow stock lighting. I did my full dash, center stack, steering wheel, and interior a few years back and loved it every since.

 

Looks like I'm gonna hold off on the instrument cluster. I need to get a spudger to remove the needles. Did you have any issues getting them off and back on correctly? Or do the needles re-zero when you plug the cluster back in? Did this on an F250 a few years back to attach a new face and had trouble getting the speedo and tach back on correctly.

 

I followed a number of youtube vids on removing the needles and reseating them but I did have issues a number of times with the needles jumping up months later. I would take the whole thing apart and re-zero the needles and they would do the same thing weeks down the road. However, I have not had an issue with them for quite some time *knock on wood*


I guess worst case you could probably take it to the dealer and have the needles zeroed by the programmer. I also added an escalade gauge face when I had everything apart. I have a build thread on the other forums with a lot of pics. There isn't a dedicated build thread here so I've never moved the thread over to this forum.

 

Found a copy of your build thread at H4O, great stuff. Getting a lot of ideas from it, Escalade face looks rad! And your idea about the white LEDs looks like the way to go, think I'll do just that.

 

Thanks! I played around with blue and red LED's but decided to just stick with white. Blue was over the top, red would be nice but some of the lenses were too dark for the red. White looks stock just much cleaner and crisper. Be careful with the door controls if you do those as well. I believe those are 3.4v LED's if I remember correctly. Also don't try to pull out the old lights on those boards, the copper contacts will be torn off the board-happened to me. Buy a good solder wick and use that then remove the old bulbs. That will also make it easier to insert the legs of the new LED's.