Yes Bogy ;
The light waves are passed by clean platic light guides and they get all dusty and dirty over the years .
Take the entire dashboard binnacle out and apart , clean every inch of it and then carefully hand polish the inside of the clear plastic cover with Meguiar's Plastic Polish (Pep Boys , O'Reilly's AutoZone etc.) using lens tissue or Scott's plain white TP and you'll be well pleased at how bright they get .
Never blindingly bright but plenty good enough to see at night .
I need to do this on my Coupe as the entire car filled up with Diesel Smoke the day I bought it .
While it's apart you can solder a by pass jumper wire to the dash dimmer rheostat or buy a new one if you're pickier than I am .
So far I've had mixed results cleaning the original rheostats .
-Nate
Bogy Wrote:
I decided to try to do something about the annoyingly dim panel lighting in my 300TD. To that end I got a couple of light sockets and "wired up" some super bright LEDs. I tested them on the workbench at 12 volts (regulated) and almost blinded myself. But when I put them in the sockets of the instrument cluster they were almost as dim as the warm glow normal lights. I took them back out and powered both a normal light and the LED light simultaneously with the same supply. I couldn't believe how bright the normal lights actually were. Which makes me ask myself - "What's up here?" It's too late and rainy to do any more investigating tonight. But does anyone know if there is a filter or light limiting apperature and maybe a diffuser between the bulb and the light outlet port at the top of the cluster? I don't believe there is any reason other than that to account for how dim these bulbs seem to be. I will also post the photos of the final product. I'm kinda proud of them. Look in the photo section in folder called
"bogy's LED intrument cluster lights"
Bogy
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