LED dash lights

Since I need to replace my check engine lamp, I am thinking of upgrade the lighting while I am at it with LED's.

Has anyone replaced the Indicator and dash lamps with LED's? If so, did you use colored ones for the different indicators to match, or just all white?

Also, I think the computer may check that the "check engine light" is there and throw a code if not?? Has anyone used an LED lamp in that location and received no code, or is this one where you will need a resistor in parallel to fool the computer into thinking there is an incandescent bulb in place?

I did a search on here, but did not find anything. If no one makes a drop in replacement, I think I could make them pretty easy. Will research more when I get time....

 

Picked up all the LED's for my dash lights today. I happen to work close to superbrightleds.com, so I picked them up. I am changing the back lighting from green to blue. I am hoping it looks a little more modern. The warning Lights will all have LED's colored to match. Here is what I ordered. I should have 1 extra blue assuming the center gauges only have one back light per gauge. These are the best and brightest ones they have that fit our sockets.

(8) 74-xHP3: Wedge Base LED bulb 74-AHP3: Amber $27.92 Super Bright LEDs
(9) 74-xHP3: Wedge Base LED bulb 74-RHP3: Red $31.41 Super Bright LEDs
(4) 74-xHP3: Wedge Base LED bulb 74-GHP3: Green $13.96 Super Bright LEDs
(13) 74-xHP3: Wedge Base LED bulb 74-BHP3: Blue $45.37 Super Bright LEDs

I dont know what I need for the center console yet since I have not taken it apart.

 

The bulbs for the backlighting have green "rubbers" on them.

 

Yes.

I have the backlighting in and they look great so far. The pain is that these LED's are polarized, so I am in the process of flipping all the warning lights to make them work now.

 

Well, so much for putting my lift in today. I ended up working on the car all day. It took forever to do all the backlighting. These LED's are not omni-directional, so you have to get them all in the correct way. Also, a couple of them were not working due to bad solder joints. I resoldered them and they worked fine after that. I also found several other things to work on that got me sidetracked along the way

-De-stickied the steering column pieces (Great Value oven cleaner and isopropyl alcohol did the trick)

-Removed the remants of some whistler radar detector that had wires running to the front of the car and some detector up on the top of the windshield area under the trim hanging down by the rear view mirror.

-Rewired the power to the amplifiers for the sound system. Turns out the subwoofer was not working due to whoever installed it putting the power through an Amp connector. It was melted. Someone spent some $$ on the sound system

In summary, the LED's look and work great!
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Yes, any color will work , even white.

 

I figured out what LED's work in the HVAC control panel. The sticker from Ricambi does have a green tint where the old clear bulbs would hit. I tested the sticker with my other LED's before ordering these, and the blue pretty much over rides the green tint and it looks blue. Other colors would need to be tested and of course green would be perfect. The two buttons stay green as they use a green rubber booted lamp that has a high and low I believe (changes intensity when button is pressed). I did not change these to LED because LED's may not react correctly to the resistance they are using to drop the current through the lamp for the dimmer mode. I also think they look better being green instead of blue. It breaks them out as a seperate function than the knobs to me.

High Power LED Instrument bulb NEO4-BHP: 4mm
NEO4-BHP
From superbrightleds.com.

Of course you can get the green ones also, and never replace a lamp again. You also do not need to use a sharpe on these when using the Ricambi overlay like some have done on the clear lamps.
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These pictures will save you some trouble of figuring out the positive and negatives so you can insert the LED's correctly on the first try. Unfortunatly the LED's are not marked, so you need to just hook 12V to them and see which whey that work and mark the negative or postive side yourself. I also marked the two pins on the connector that supply + and - to the lamps.
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I am officially calling the LED swaps a success. I now have all blue backlighting on the gauges and the knobs of the AC working and all the indicator lamps in the gauge pod working great. Keep in mind you can always go green again and it should still look better than those rubber boot covered failure prone lamps. Also, if you figure the current draw from all those lamps and once vs. LED's, it's a little less draw on your alternator that you can send to your amplifier instead I took the car for a quick spin tonight and I like the blue much better personally. I like the contrast on the console as well.
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I wanted to post an update in case anyone is doing this. It turns out that you need to leave the regular lamp in the Air Bag light location. The LED will cause the Airbag light to stay on at all times. It may be possible to use a resistor across the power to the LED board, but it is not worth it to me and I just stuck the regular lamp back in this location.

 

Yes it does work. It is not exactly the same as before, the sensitivity is different. It may not dim all the way to totally off (Can't remember if the regular lamps would or not?).