360 Instrument EL Backlight

Ordered from HERE, delivery was very quick here in the UK. Pretty straightforward job, two hours of being careful, would obviously be far quicker next time.

The only wrinkle, as such, is that the tail of the new panel is far longer than the old one and ends up sticking out the side of the cluster. It's hidden inside the binnacle when fitted though, so no biggie I guess.

And the colour seemed better IRL than in the photo.



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You can thank @Stammler for that ! His post HERE put me onto it. And it appears the price hasn't changed in the last two years. Bargain.

 

Update.

The new panel failed after four months of very occasional use. The supplier sent me a new one no question. Slightly different design. I finally got around to fitting it earlier this month and found it was DOA. The supplier is not replying to my emails.

I've ordered one from aliexpress instead. The picture is identical to the last one I received so I assume that's where they were sourcing them from in the first place.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004624314067.html

 

Apparently you can't link to Aliexpress from this forum.

 

The new panel from aliexpress arrived today - 8 day delivery from China, pretty good. Bench tested before fitting just to be on the safe side and all good. Let's see how long this one lasts ! EL panels are pretty cool, I think they're just a bit fragile.


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Looks like you’ve got it covered in the other thread

I got a small 12V inverter from eBay.

 

Update. The latest one has failed too. Eight months was better than the first two I guess. Less than 800 miles in eight months, FWIW, most of them without the lights on.

Total score so far:

Two from elpanelandtape.co.uk, four months & zero months, after that they started ignoring me.

Aliexpress - eight months. Visually it was identical to the DOA one above (apart from not being DOA, obvs). I’ll see if they want to send me a replacement.

 

I don’t have a scope, no. Measuring the AC voltage showed it behaving normally, going up & down when adjusting the dash illumination level. Do you think it’s sending random spikes and burning the panel ?

 

Interesting. I do already have have a couple of small inverters. After the first panel failed so quickly and the replacement didn't work at all, my first thought was that the driver was bad, so I bought a small inverter from the same place. Still nothing. They advised that I needed a bigger inverter, so I bought a bigger inverter from them, and still nothing. After that they stopped talking to me and I ordered the panel from aliexpress (which was identical, they must be all from the same manufacturer).

I've ordered a basic oscilloscope now. It's the sort of thing I ought to have bought long ago anyway. I'll post back if it shows up anything interesting.

 

I'm in the UK. Getting it there & back on top of whatever they charge for the repair will be a LOT.