It's been awhile since I posted anything, but over the winter I finally got around to fixing the dash lights in my truck. The picture I have attached shows the dash before I worked on the lights. There are two 12 volt bulbs, one between each gauge pod. You get half circles of light. The air fuel gauge is back lite with some type of LED, so the whole face is bright and easy to see, the factory gauges are yellow and dim compared to the aftermarket gauge.
I went to Ebay and purchased 18' of bright white LED strip lighting, it was cheap, and easy to cut to different lengths. I wrapped the inside of each pod with one loop of the LED light, soldered two leads to the end and ran them out the sides. The LED lights are just behind the gauge face plates, they can't be seen.
I wired all three together with a dimmer switch. They are too bright on full power, so the dimmer was necessary. All three pods are as bright as the A/F gauge, no shadows or dark spots, just clean even light over the whole face of the gauges.
I may go back and change out the bright white for a colored strip. Most all the RBG colored ones come with a remote controlled dimmer and programmer. A nice orange or red back light would be easier on the eyes and look pretty cool. Plus the dimmer would better, mine is pretty touchy.
So if you want really good lighting thats cheap and not to hard to install, it does require pulling the gauges apart, don't be afraid of the LED strips. I tried LED bulbs, they were not any better, these gauges need light to go sideways from the bulbs, LEDS don't do that very well.
I purchased a cheap strip of LED's, no water proofing, just the cheapest I could find, I think it was $11 for 18 feet. RBG ones don't cost much more then that.
