4kq Instrument lighting - LED Question

[Ameer Antar]

LED's are harder to work w/ just as you've seen. They have a much smaller 
viewing angle. There are wide-viweing angle LED's but they are usually the 
cheap, low output kind. You have much more of a selection if you get the 
digikey catalog, along w/ different colors....orange, green, white, even 
blue, also different shapes, sizes. [www.digikey.com]. W/ almost any LED 
though, you need to point the LED toward the driver seat. I bet if you're 
real creative [and brave] you can come up w/ a way to mount the LED 
straight thru the original holes. Remember you need a resistor for the 
LED's and for blue and white LED's you need a different setup. LED's don't 
get hot, so you can use tape around the LED to keep light from lighting up 
the next indicator if you need it. I'm sure lot's of us would love to see 
some webapge w/ pics when your done. good luck.

-ameer


At 06:02 PM 2/12/2001 , you wrote:
>I am attempting to replace incandecent bulbs with superbright red LED's.
>
>Problem I have is positioning light so as to actually illuminate guages.
>
>Seems that there is a sweet spot that the pinpoint of light must hit to
>work, seemingly like a window. Any BTDT on this ?
>Dennis