Interior illumination

[Adrian Southgate]

I've been using my two kits full time now for quite a few years and have often found that after dark the illumination from the instruments and on the other parts of the interior is sadly very bad.

New cars like Sue's mondeo have very nicely laid out and illuminated dials and controls, easily visible even at night (everything is backlit once the sidelights go on) and it was while I was driving home from the outlaws last night I also noticed that the orange from the backlighting appeared to 'wash' into places that it shouldn't, actually making the whole dash slightly orange. I had a poke around and found two tiny led's recessed into the rear view mirror housing that are orange and have fresnel lenses to spread the light.

They are not these new ultra bright water clear type but older looking solid colour ones so after a bit of digging in the spare leds box on the shelf I found three dim orange ones which I will be incorporating into the mirror housing in the Sierra and three or four dim green ones that I can use in the legerra.

I would have used blue ones in the Sierra to match the dash but I think it might feel a little cold and the blue ones are all ultra brights and would probably be too bright. They will have to be wired up with a 670ohm resistor on the negative leg or they will just blow, i might even have to go to 1Kohm if they are too bright. It really needs to be very soft so as not to interfere with the dash lights and recessed in so it doesn't reflect from the glass and stainless panels. 

The results are going to be interesting as the Sierra is like the black hole of calcutta at night apart from the blue instrument illumination, the only visible light coming from the phone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter socket.

Just wondered if anyone else has tried to improve the visibility of 'stuff' inside the car for night use?

[Adrian Southgate]

I tend to put resistors on the negative side of the led but in this case I will wire all three led's back to a 1K variable pot on a board as well. This will give me a 'safe' voltage as a maximum and adjustment down scale from there 

[Adrian Southgate]

I'm going to wire it up to a test supply later tonight and try it on the desk, i'll do a video.

[Dave Adams]

i have looked at fitting some led's for interior illumination especially the legerra.......been thinking about a "string" of them to spread the illumination.......

[Adrian Southgate]

Let me know Dave, I have a good quality supplier of LED's through Ebay, very rare his ones blow.

[James Doulton]

I still can't get used to opening the door of the Legerra and there being no interior light. You think such things are unnecessary until you don't have them. I keep an inspection light in the glove box.

I don't like LEDs as they don't seem to give light that I can read by. I notice this when using my inspection light or my head light (on the front of my head like a miner), they seem really bright but I think that my pupils dilate as if it were dark and that ruins the focus of my eyes. As for blue, I have difficulty with that, as do most old eyes. I like the little light bulbs and I have had to fiddle about and replace a few to get the instruments visible at night.

[James Doulton]

Silly me, of course!

[Adrian Southgate]

The legerra has white dials and green illumination as its a green car, all the dash lights are LED but it's lacking light round the speedo so I will add some extra ones when I do the interior. I'll add door switches and put the lamps in the footwells as well as one at the top of the screen. I might get really silly and put puddle lights on too, the ones in the bottom of the doors.     

The Sierra has white dials and blue illumination which brings up the orange needles a treat, there must be some UV in the light spectrum emmitted by those but the rest of the car is dark. The interior light is part of the mirror assembly and is a very bright festoon triple LED unit. its way too bright to have on when the car is in motion so only comes on with the doors