major repairs to drivetrain system!

[Brett Dikeman]

At 3:47 PM -0800 2/14/02, Brian Devlin wrote:
>>  but given that all of the switches
>>I've taken apart so far have showed signs of the bulb burning the
>>plastic, I don't think the 60mA version is such a hot(pardon the pun)
>>idea.
>
>Sounds like a good place to put and LED.

True, but the problem is that, among other things, LEDs usually have
at most a 20-30 degree, cone spread; the bulb is 360, so light
bounces off all the white sides etc of the box and you get a great,
evenly lit diagram.  It might work here because of the distance
between the light and the diagram, but, for example, things get
trickier with the various switches because they use light
guides(clear plastic) to bounce light around to all the switch pieces.

It has occured to me that a PCB mounting, side-angled LED might work
great for the light guides, but the problem is sizing and finding one
that has a builtin resistor for 12v/14v operation.

I'll try to get around to poking in Digikey's catalog for something
that might work, while I have the switches all apart and can measure
with the calipers for clearances etc.

Positioning/beam spread is the very same reason no one has, as of
yet, managed to adapt LEDs into the dash lighting of the older
cars(to my knowledge.)  Every year or so the whole LEDs-in-dash
thread gets fired up, nothing ever comes of it :-(

B
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