Like I said, I'm interested as well. You anywhere near Miami, FL>?

 

Hees in GA.

 

Foxtrot your instruments look great! This Thread is
HIGHLY informative!

My car comes with the "my color" dash and can change
at any time. Usually I keep blue but for the holidays I
change to orange/red and green/red.

QUESTION:
Do you think it's possible to get variable color LEDs
installed and make it so you can change the colors?

I hope Clover doesn't see me posting here, she'll keep
me and my soldering iron far from the MINI. Right when
she leasts expects it... ***WHAM!*** Red & Blue!

Although, tell me how the needle goes, because on the
Mustang it's stuck Red. (no changing it)

 

Sure, the tach is the second easiest bit to do. (The first bit is the Overhead Clock in '02 models..) I'm north of you, in Atlanta. While I drive alot, I rarely get that far south. :/ If your up my way, I can get them done, or if you want to ship it to me, I'll ship it back. It'd take about a week's time, depending on how my 'real' job goes.

Cheers,
Me.

 

I'm sure there's a way, but it would be EXTREMELY difficult. Here's a rundown of how the LEDs work, currently and those all-color LEDs..

In the car, power is supplied from the Speedo itself to all dash lights (NOT the LCDs). All LEDs are wired up in series - so that if one was removed, all of them in that series go out. (I believe there's three / series.) To dim the dash, the Speedo turns the LEDs on and off very fast, making it appear as if they're dim.

The all-color LEDs are actually three LEDs in one - Red, Green, Blue. (Like CRT TVs!) Therefore, they'd have 4 wire connections - Ground, and the Power for the three colors. To get these to work in the dash (and all show the same color!) You'd have to, high-level:
1. Cut all the traces leading to each series of LEDs. Speedo and Tach.
2. Run a main 'power' lead from one of these traces to your.. adjusting circuit.
3. Run wires back for each color (3 wires) and then in the guages, split it to each series of LEDs.
4. Take out old LEDs. Somehow attach new LEDs in same spots.
5. Connect all the leads back up.

This is ignoring issues right now: These LEDs couldn't be hooked up in series, so you'd need something to condition the power. you would need some circuit with your 'switch' to adjust the power (resistors, for example) leading in from the main power to each color lead.

Again, possible, and tempting for me, but... I have other mods I want to do.

As far as the needles go, they're giving me trouble. First off, they're not square. They're tapered DOWN, away from the driver. The bottom of them are painted orange, and then painted again in opaque white. (Probably are IMD or something, but the effect is the same.) The white opaqe at the bottom keeps the light that is illuminating the paint from glowing on the faces. Neat way of doing it. The DOWN side is while the paint can be easily sanded off, finding another paint that would work if proving difficult. I'm going to try a non-paint solution next, we'll see.

Sorry all. I ramble.
Mike

 

How does the clock come off on the 02 cars? If I can find a soldering iron I might just have to try this out.

Also, what did you use as a diffuser for the LCD readouts?

 

Good luck, but be careful.

 

The little clock comes off by -
1. Grip it hard and push back - away from you, towards the front of the car.
2. With it pushed back, lower the front (part facing you!) of it. The tabs should clear theheadliner.

Remember you have to change ALL of them before you can plug it back in and test it! If you do one wrong, none will work!

In my car, I used several layers of tissue paper. It's not perfect, but to anyone else sitting in the car, they wouldn't know any difference except to color. When I do 1nf3rn0's, I found some 'plastic paper' that I'm going to try at a local craftshop. If that won't do the job, I'm going to hunt around for a thin sheet of white translucent plastic and dremel out an appropriate size filter. The LCD, when energized (the numbers and symbols) are perfetly clear, so if you DON'T put something back there, you'll see straight to the LEDs, and it'll be really hard to read.

Having said that, I just got a nifty idea, something I'm going to try on my car..

Me.

 

Once you figure everything out, I will contact you and se about getting down there.

 

Hrm... I like it. I'm going to see if there's a way to actually put it in use. Now, before you say, "What the..?!", keep in mind that I did this VERY quickly, while AT work. I didn't completely reassemble the display, so that the overlay fell down some. (During my first test, it was centered nicely - I forgot to grab a shot of it.) The picture quality is not that great, due to digital zoom on a kids camera.. But..:


Right now, something like this won't work - because the data displayed is clear, you can't read anything on it. However, off and on over the next week or so, I'm gonna try lightening up the logo some (a lot?) and giving it a shot. If ANYTHING, print out my car's name to put on the bottom of the display.

PS - I love my job.

 

Cool. Not sure if I want it on mine though.