Addiction, this one is aimed at you. Its the weekend so I thought Id pull my civic appart for the fun of it. I pulled the cluster out and decided to change the backlightsfrom orange to red. I know you did a DIY but I was wondering if I would just be able to change the bulb colour or something to make it easier. I noticed that the backlights that you take out in your pictures are already blue. I assume they didnt work too well and thats why you put the LED strips in? Either way, I am on the other side of the world so I am not expecting to find out before I put it back together so Im gonna put some red silicone sleeves over the lights and just fire it up tonight and see what heinous combination of orange/red I can concoct. BTW, these silicone sleeves would have saved me a WORLD of trouble if I had discovered them before I changed all my console backlights. I just had to pull the orange ones off and put red ones on, but noooooo, I went and resoldered them all with red LEDs.

 

well if ya want the brightest best looking even flow... then you need to do what i did

main reason i swaped mine out is cause they just werent bright enough...... main reason why i did the full swap...

 

Ok well I just did the other thing, and you are right, they are not too bright, but they are ok. However... my dash started smoking. I think the slicone sleaves were heating up too much. I might do the complete swap. One thing I found was that because the actual faces the gauges sit on has a slight orange backing filter, that that is showing through a little, so the red looks a little more dull. I wonder if you notice it with your blue?Do you find yours too bright with the led strips? they look like they might get a bit much. BTW, thanks for doing the DIY, it helped me get to that stage anyway.

 

well to me thier just fine now. not realy bright and definatly not dim.... BUT if ya solder the wires to the board then your DIMM control on the dash should still work and you can dim the lights IF YA WANT.... personaly i like them on full....

 

I just checked them last night in the dark and they look pretty good actually. They arnt as bright as my neons or anyhting, but they are still definatly a blood red/crimson (i just love that word and wanted to use it)as opposed to a more vibrant tokyo drift red. Ill give them a test run as is and if I dont like them after a few straps, then Ill try your mod.

 

dude, the swap isnt that hard, its actually super fun. Just take all your clusters out, grab a dremmel, and bend/glue the strips in there directly in front of the gagues. It works out really well, and in the end it looks SO sick and it relaly bright to, so you dont gotta deal iwth the things heating up/smoking/smelling bad, and iits alot brighter than the bulbs being covered in a film