As everyone knows maverick dash illumination is very minimal. Here's my solution. It's not the only one, and maybe not the best one, but it works, is plenty bright, and fully dimmable. Supplies : scissors, soldering iron and solder, 1/4" nutdriver. The light is a 36" LED strip I found at auto zone for $16. They had green (which I would have preferred, but in 2 12" strip for $10 more) I pulled the gauge cluster apart, and cleaned the inside lip of the angled piece that sets between the lense and gauges. This is also a perfect time to clean/ replace the lense. The LED strip has a good quality tape to hold to the plastic. The strip fits perfectly on the 72 cluster I did for Jake's car, but the lip on the cluster seems thinner on the 70 cluster pictured. I terminated the strip near the lower center of the panel, leaving about 6" of extra lights for my auxiliary gauges. Run the leads out the bottom light socket hole, and cut close. My method for supplying power is soldering the wires directly to the bulb, and reinstalling the bulb and socket into the cluster. (Since these are LEDs, they only work with proper polarity. If they don't light up, pull the light socket, rotate 180 degrees and reinstall. ) Reassemble and install gauge cluster. Fully dimmable, really bright, Easy. Best thing is no additional wiring to get in the way under the dash.
Thanks guys! After driving the car home in the dark tonight, I'm planning on adding a resistor to the circuit to mellow it out a little. With the lights fully lit, it's like having a big neon sign in front of the steering wheel.
This is really cool! So you attach the leads directly to the bulbs then? This won't affect the bulb at all?
The dimmer works, but to dim the dash enough to see the road the tach, is dark. The bulb just acts as a plug after connecting the wires. Trust me, if it did affect the bulb it wouldn't be noticed.
Thanks for this thread and the many others on dash lights that I've read on here! I just finished wiring the dash lights for my grandfathers 74 Mav. I used LEDs from Super Bright: three of the 194-AHP5 Amber bulbs to replace the 194s and the NFLS-A60-WHT-LC2 Amber LED strip. I also ordered some of their strip segment connectors but they were too bulky, so I didn't use them. Instead of using an entire strip, I cut it into segements and soldered them with 20 gauge wire to the connection points. (Note: This is my first electrical job soldering. I went through a ton of YouTube vids, wasted several segments of LED strip, and several feet of wire learning; Undoubtedly, this could look much better if done by someone more experienced.) I ran the wire through a hole drilled in the back, through a grommet, and put a connector on the end. The other end will be tapped in to the harness: the Lt Blue w/ Red wire going in to pin 13 and the black wire going in to pin 11. I don't have it in car yet, but hooked up on the bench the results are great. It's difficult to judge from the following photos but they do give an idea. The first photo is just the Amber 194s without the LED strip. It's actually dimmer than it appears in the photo and very unsatisfactory. It's also more yellow than amber: The next photo is with both the 194s and strip and again the photo doesn't give it justice but the lighting and the color is near perfect from what I can judge on the bench.
