I recently had this crazy idea that I should swap out the current aftermarket water temp, oil pressure and volts gauge in my 63 wagon. Yeah, the current set works fine and they do the trick, but I thought I would put something else together. I'm kind of a gauge nut so I put together a set of old school Stewart Warner 2 5/8" gauges which include the mechanical water temp, mechanical oil pressure and Volts gauge. I was able to find 3 very nice 2 5/8" chrome cups as well. Pictured below is what I came up with. Each of these gauges have the light port on the rear of the gauge case. They all take the standard bulb kit that I'm sure you've all seen. I obviously want to light the 3 gauges. I ran into a problem. Once I plugged the light kit into the rear of the gauge, it was too long and did not fit into the gauge cups. The light kit (housing) pictured on the bottom is what I had. I was able to find an AutoMeter light kit that has a shorter housing as evident in the photo below. The AutoMeter kit will fit in a gauge cup. Well, then I got to thinking again (which is typically where I go wrong) It's quite common that the standard incandescent 12V light bulb that come with the light kits have trouble lighting the entire gauge face. I know this is not exactly traditional but they do make an LED bulb that fits directly into these light kits. Here is the standard incandescent light bulb kit. I ordered a set of the LED's and I must say they are much brighter. As you can imagine you can get the LED's in a wide array of colors including White. The white is probably what most of us HAMBers would want as you'll retain the old skool look as it's going to look the same as a standard bulb. However this will do a much better job lighting your gauge face. For the heck of it I ordered Dark Blue as well just to see how well I could get these gauges to light, the results were quite dramatic. Here's another old school Stewart Warner AMPS gauge I had laying around. I figured I'd light it up to see how well it would light.... Here is the 10 pack of bulbs for $12.99 Again, these are the Dark Blue LED's, not the White LED's, which is probably the bulb that would be most appropriate for us. So with that I apologize in advance as I know the blue is not a traditional look. I'm probably gonna get my hand slapped and spend the night in HAMB Jail. But, the white LED light may be a good option if your current setup cannot provide adequate light to your gauge face. Also, now you have the part number for the correct light kit if you want to mount your gauges in a cup. I will see myself to my cell now....
Those things are just beautiful! They make my gauges look cheap. All the panel lights in my OT project car have small 12 V lightbulbs, as you show. The clearance behind the panel for 3 lamps is tight, because of the design of the car. I am using those same shorty bulb sockets that you show. (Not only a style but one was starting to short out from rubbing on the body.) To change a bulb I’d have to remove the gauge halfway from the panel. I am going to replace them with these LEDs when I pull all the gages to install the wood dash kit. Then I had the idea that I could use a LED voltage driver to control the color of my lights. I wanted to change from green to yellow to red like my P-15 Plymouth did. I can get a signal voltage right from my speedometer. But I finally remembered is that I could also use fiber-optic cables and not put the bulbs in the gauges at all! My old Cadillac had fiber-optic cables in it back in the 80s. You could stick various fiber-optic cables through that hole in the gauge and bring them to remote light sources.
I put LEDs on dimmers in my kitchen & aquarium. You just have to buy the ones that are dimmable and the dimmer has to be LED compatible. If you want to experiment, a set of LED Christmas tree lights is a lot of fun to play with. I used those LEDs to repair the lights in an old stereo.
You can also get a single led dot with an adhesive back and use 1 or 2 for the S/W gauges with light windows.
Depends on the control circuit built into the LED lamp. The LED itself always need an exterior power controller (current limiter to be specific), anything from a simple resistor in series to rather advanced electronics. Those are built into LED lamps like these so people don't have to worry about it, unlike when you build something just using the LEDs themselves. Some of the control circuits can work together with another dimmer earlier in the system, some of them try to "overrule" changes on the input and can't be controlled by dimmers.
Hello, Nice similar gauges and lights @catdad49. The color is warm during dark nights inside of the car. It looks bright, but not too harsh while looking ahead. The color is mild to the eyes and gives the gauges some pizazz. Similar to today's modern cars. but, still old style. @Speed~On ... Are you able to get matching Stewart Warner volt meter and Tachometer to go with the other two SW gauges? Matching gauges goes a long way for a factory look design and symmetry in any installation on any hot rod or cruiser. The one black gauge will stick out like a sore thumb. The tach, as nice as it is, just does not go with the SW gauges. These are pretty harsh, staring at them on any short or long drive. Your eyes will constantly stare at the bright blue color. YRMV Jnaki The matching SW gauges can be applied to any build. Our 1940 Willys Gas Coupe had similar matching SW gauges. It looked solid, very official and gave off the hint of power from within. They even lit up with a soft, low light for the night races.
My Summit gauges have a green-ish tint to them and look great. They are big, 2.625" and are easy to read. I made the gauge power common and the gauge lights common. My OT 2020 Mustang has a way to change the lighting colors, I'm just too lazy to dive into the owner's manual.
That regular blue is particularly harsh. If they have "ice blue", that looks like the old florescent dash in a Chrysler. A much nicer color (turquoise-white). As much as I love LED's for their robustness, longevity and cooler running, I went back to incandescent bulbs in my dash because they couldn't match the gamut, and didn't recreate the same warm glow properly. Putting in the aforementioned turquoise though? Space age!
Thanks for the info, I just got my gauges back and wanted new lights. I had no idea where to get them, or part number, now I do. What is the diameter of the spring contact area? Thanks Tony
Recently installed all AutoMeter gauges in my car .As you, with the standard condescend bulbs the gauges are not illuminated enough. Thx for the part no for LED,s
@jnaki The AMPS gauge pictured above (and in the below photo) was for demonstration and is not the gauge that I will be using. I am going to use the Volts gauge below for safety reasons. An AMPS gauge is wired with a large hot wire, which has in the past caused some car fires. For that reason, I prefer to use a Volts gauge. This Volts gauge is as close to the others as I can get. In fact, this Volts gauge is considered the matching set (to my Oil Pressure and Water Temp) by the manufacturer. The Volts gauge just looks a little different because it is a half sweep instead of a full sweep like the oil and water gauges. @Speed~On ... Are you able to get matching Stewart Warner volt meter and Tachometer to go with the other two SW gauges? Matching gauges goes a long way for a factory look design and symmetry in any installation on any hot rod or cruiser. The one black gauge will stick out like a sore thumb. The tach, as nice as it is, just does not go with the SW gauges. View attachment 5270363 These are pretty harsh, staring at them on any short or long drive. Your eyes will constantly stare at the bright blue color. YRMV The blue light is a little more subtle than what you may think. It just has a different look to it vs the standard/white. This kinda got me thinking. The 60's era drag cars used different color tint on their windows, such as blue, green, orange, etc.
Kinda had the same problem. Decided to use LED’s cause standard bulbs would not fit the restored 1933 Chrysler gauges I used in my coupe.
When your eyes get older, you want good light, but not blinding brightness. I wear glasses, and some LEDs are bright to the point of being uncomfortable or even dangerous, think Law enforcement blue lights. They blind me at night because they are too bright. I have done the LED gauge experiment, trying various colors. For my old eyes, green seemed to look the best and didn't hurt my eyes after long periods of dark night driving. White and blue caused hot spots, while red was ok to start with, it became less visible after a time to me, especially in low light or less than total darkness conditions. That being said, I have standard bulbs in my cars. No more than they are driven, they should last a long time. I may still use a few LEDs in some hard to get to places as time goes on, but only in places where I won't be staring at them the whole time.
I use LEDs for the turn signal arrows and high beam indicator in my 49 Buick dash. Made a big difference in how noticeable they are.
That's the color I'm taking about- what a lot of manufacturers tried to achieve with turquoise filters over regular bulbs (which never really worked very well). Reminds me of the bright glowing colors in comic books where the mad scientist or bad guy has his workshop! Phil
Some vendors have a variety of different spectrums from cool white (5000 to 7000 k) to warm white (2500 to 3500k), warm white best simulates incandescent bulbs. The problem I found is finding LEDs that are not too big in the “bulb” area yet still provide uniform light as they can be much more directional than filament bulbs. Experimenting with different ones made a vast improvement in my ‘37 Chevy stock gauge cluster.
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