Dashlight bulbs

[TVR keith]

I have the white backed instruments on my 2000 Chim, and would like to fit blue bulbs. The instruments on my wifes Passat look really good with the blue glow.
Before I take the top of the dashboard off, does anyone know what fitting and wattage bulbs I need and how many?
I assume all the smaller gauges have one and the rev counter and speedo each have two, is this correct?
Has anyone done this, will it look good when finished?

[ads]

my rev counter has two, the speedo only has one. That it why it is a bit dimmer than the rev counter.
They are the capless bulb type, think they are 2w each, but I can't remember properly. The dash top is a bit of a bugger to get off though.

[jason1788]

I tired this years ago with green paint. IMO the colour will appear very pale unless you have a thick coating, in which case the light will not be bright enough. Using LEDs would probably work, but you would have to make some holders somehow.

Irrelevant and subjective this may be, but I find the blue & red instrument illumination on current VW vehicles quite nauseous!

[bigdods]

You can probably pick up ready made LEDs on ebay - I know I have seen them on there for my Omega - I would have thought that they will be a fairly standard fitment.

Could be wrong of course, it is a TVR so they may be special glass hand blown by latvian virgins...

[IM]

bigdods said:

...blown by latvian virgins...

[lordgrover]

bigdods said:

Could be wrong of course, it is a TVR so they may be special glass hand blown by latvian virgins...

Has to be quote of the week... Bang-on bigdods!

[davidn]

There was a thread running a while ago on the Cerby forum about changing the dash bulbs, Dean rat pac lead the way and did all the hard work and sourced a supplier and sorted out the fitments. I had a go myself:


Supplied by www.ultraleds.co.uk a mixture of (501) Blue 6 Super Bright Leds Wide Angle £7.05 per pair (inclusive) and (223) - 9mm BC 6 Leds Blue Bulb £3.50 each (inclusive). Don't know how many of each you'll need for a Chim but the websites quite helpful once you have the old bulb fitments in front of you.
Cheers
David

Edited by davidn on Friday 18th August 20:13

[tvrchim]

Done mine looks the dogs used blue led had to make a holder for one of the gauges carn`t remember which one www.photobox.co.uk/album/3774044
Hope the pic works its my first attempt

[barreti]

Hello over here on the Chimaera forum.
It's my first time posting on here and it feels a bit wierd talking to you golfers

OK, sorry about the dig. I'll get serious now.

When I had the dash out of the Griff I decided to swap all the dash bulbs because taking the dash out isn't a job I wanted to do again in a hurry.
The bulbs in mine were already blue - with, very oddly, the exception of the clock which was green! - so I swapped them for these supposedly bright ICEBLUE bulbs from Ring (RW801 12v 5w capless w2)
For the money, I wish I hadn't bothered. They were about 4 times the price of white ones and you really can't tell they are blue at all. They certainly don't give you the VW GTi dash look you'd expect.

LEDs are fun to play with though and if someone finds some sort of converter to hold LEDs into the hole the normal bulb fits into I would be very interested. Oh, and they'd have to come up with a 'plug in' method of attaching the LEDs to the wiring because I wouldn't fancy trying to solder all those LEDs in.