if you had black faced gauges (like the ones found on the new product thread) with the blue lights, then you would have one pretty package.

 

ideed, this is the type of lighting in my current Golf (99), and the only thing I'll miss about the car...

 

I have been following this thread closely as well as the Mini2 thread and I must say that I am impressed with the initative show here - I have been doing gauge swaps for some time now and I cannot stress how important it is not to damage not only the Mini needles but also the needle shaft that the needles hold on to. What is important in any needle removal (in this particular example) is equal pressure applied under the center of the needle and puched up and off - but I cannot confirm this.

We are working with a company in Japan to do different gauge faces for the new Mini and it is not an easy gauge swap.

For the guy who did this blue swap - it almost looks as if he either used an additional blue film overlay from behind or did in fact re-solder his amber LEDs with blue LEDs. But I have seen this done before in the newer BMW's and I must say that there is a real danger area where you may have light bleed or pools of light that are not uniform like you had with the original amber lighting - this is caused by LEDs that are not well made or installed correctly.

Also, why even go through this if you cannot even change out the auto AC unit's illumination to match - as well as the toggle bar. These two areas will be a real challenge - but I would like to see what the outcome is.

-Peter/Rspeed Mini

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Potato - Very true, everything you said about the needle being fragile, I have decided that its best to not change it for the following reasons:
1. The needle assembly is way to fragile feeling, with the motor stops easily breaking on me (everything is ok now )
2. Hand soldering SMT leds is only for the highly skilled electronics technician or chinese factory worker in mainland china.
3. Excess heat applied to the circuit board (or LED) during soldering will cause not only LED failure but will certainly contribute to other components on the board failing, namely any of the 3 integrated circuits.

I have hypothesized that the LEDs are however driven by a current controlled source, making the voltage difference from orange to blue not a problem. This is somewhat evident from the fact that you can dim all the display units evenly. LED brightness is exponential with regard to voltage, and linear with regard to current. This means that a constant current driver in tandem with a dimmer switch can adjust the current on the linear scale with great ease. But in the end all this is still useless!

The guy that did the Blue did have to switch the actuall LEDs. The reason for this is that LEDs emit monochromatic light, only one peak and dominate wavelength ~ color making filtering impossible.

Hope this is understandable and possibly helpfull to others.

 

RSpeed
If you could possibly offer a tach swap, where you could make a new tach that has the blue lights, I think you would have some business. However, that point about the AC is a let down...

 

i think just a different color insert for the guages would be cool with me!
i think the all blue l.e.d.'swill have people thinking that we really are driving vw's!
hahahhahahahahaa!

 

I just wanna be different...

 

Thanks for the info Chandler, mad props on your dedication!

The Moto micro may be of the 08 family, MC68HC90[8xxxxx]
not being an FAE, I can't tell you anything more useful about it.

Reworking the board without taking off the needle (and/or screwing up it's e-stops) is about impossible! The needle will have to be reinstalled after hooking the assembly back up to the car, and then doing a 'best guess' placement. This is all I can think of right now, unless there is a default position the servo will go to during power-up [w/no-signal], which would be much better!

Good luck!
Ryan

 

Chris-
Not difficult for me, but I've been working on cars for 10 years, so it
depends how mechanically inclined you are. Blue LED's cost a little more
than most colors and not a lot of people make blue surface mount LED's.
Check this link-
http://www.alliedelec.com/catalog/pf.asp?FN=479.pdf

Look at part #'s AND6BA, AND6BB on the middle right of the page. 6BA will be
more blue-violet and 6BB is bright blue (I used 6BB). You will probably need
50-60 of them depending on what options u have in your MINI.
-André

This is the email I got. Hopefully he will send some more info. Chandler, the Mini2 website says that you need even pressure to take off the needle, check it out. Just thought I might help you out.

 

seems like a crazy risky procedure!
i always was pretty good at playing "operation!"
i don't think it's worth it to me though!

 

Yeah, maybe if it were offered as a kit, but this sounds like it is out of my reach.

 

MAYBE. Yes.

Dash work is very difficult.
Keep up the good R&D.
I will definitely want to do this when all strightened out.

Thanks.

 

A few things i noticed in the pics,

-How do you get the LCDs blue too? The LCDs that say mileage and temp. They display orange usually. Do those have LEDs behind them?

-He forgot to change the color of the warning light button, but he still did the dimmer button, might look uneven that way.

-How would you get the needles to be a true blue? from what it looks like, the needle is a tranluscent orange plastic with an orange LED shining throug it, would blue through orange make brown?

Just things i was wondering about.

 

"unless there is a default position the servo will go to during power-up [w/no-signal]"


Ryan, the servo does turn the motor on to reset to a default position when its plugged in again, relying on the stops in the motor to keep the needle from going past 0. Mine broke very easily, but the manual calibration worked fine to fix the prob.

For ARitz: The needle will still light up blue. Color subtraction does not work in this case, because the light is monochromatic. You can shine an led through orange, red, black or any color glass or plastic, but the light will show up true to its emitted color.

The LCDs have custom sized backlights behind them, and since the LCDs are negative image, it would be very hard to match brightness while limiting bleedthrough on the off parts of the glass.

Yes this mod is possible, but not worth the damage that can be caused.

 

I LOVE ORANGE..... Why make them Blue? Blue = HONDA!

Just Kidding.... But I do LOVE Orange.

 

It looks like there is a Blue LED How-To finally being posted on the other thread with links to where to buy the LEDs.


_________________

 

*gasp* That blue looks kickass! Keep us posted!

 

Anyone find out how much a new spedo or tach costs? If it's not too much perhaps instead of destroying the one you have you could get a new one, try and replace the LEDs and if it works swap the new Blue ones with the stock ones and then do the same thing on the stock ones and sell them to someone. I bet there would be a few people willing to buy it.
-Chris

 

Okay, here's the story on the blue LEDs.

I just changed my gauges to blue, so I am now the expert at this,

 

Oh, this is also the first time I've ever soldered anything. You need a needle-tip soldering iron to do it. DO NOT USE A LARGER IRON, YOU WILL BURN THROUGH THE BOARD!

 

That looks like a VW!

 

Hey Sarcux..

It turned out great. I like your contrast with the orange needle and blue #'s.

Did you do the clock yet? The Hazard must have a tint or a gel on it like the clock does. Try switching to a red colour if your willing to rip it apart again.

I've got some 470's on the way now..I'm changing mine up again to.

ps. looks like you missed a LED on the tach at 6k.

KDOG

 

bruintoo: That's the entire reason I did it, I miss the blue gauges on the New Beetle I had, ehe. My next car, a Mazda 3s (haven't decided on 4 or 5 doors yet), has cool gauges too. No, I won't be getting rid of the Mini


Chamuco: I'm not gonna do the clock since I didn't do any other displays... I'm just leaving the hazard as is 'cos I don't wanna do any more soldering... and I don't have a clear one sitting around. I purposely missed that LED at 6k... made it look like there's an extra warning before redline. (In actuality I did miss it, but I'm just telling myself what I told you to make me feel better )

 

The colors looks very nice! The Mazda 3s looks great. I myself am waiting for the MK5 platform coming in in '05.
-BruinToo

 

>>Okay, here's the story on the blue LEDs.
>>
>>I just changed my gauges to blue, so I am now the expert at this,

Looks really nice.. I am thinking of having the same thing done... at my day job, we have an electronics rework team that I may have do all of the soldering. We also have the LEDs that I might be able to get my hands on. I want every thing to be one color though.. I want to go to a red color, a little change, but noticable. Then I may make the Red in the tach blue or something...