I've tried several different brand of LED lights for the 2 red instrument cluster lights and learned a couple things that might be helpful to others.
The LED bulbs that will physically fit are in the T10 form factor. Some of these bulbs have a single electrical pad on either side of the tab that goes in the socket and others have 4 total pads (2 on each side). The bulbs with 4 total pads won't work in our dash unless you cut one of the pads off on each side making the bulb have only 2 pins/pads. This due to the design our our bulb socket.
The second and most important observation is that the LED bulb will not be dim-able unless it explicitly says so on the package. Non dim-able bulbs won't work.
The picture above is of my dash with the LED lights on full brightness. I changed my speedo today to a one in KM from a car in Canada. I had a shop run the odometer up so that the total mileage matched the actual mileage of the car (or should I say Kilometerstand). They also did put new gears in and a pot for tweaking the speed accuracy. The face is custom as well with the addition of a secondary mph scale which doesn't normally appear on Euro speedos.
LED Dash lights
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- panthercity
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Re: LED Dash lights
Hey pathercity, important post and info, but I'm gonna move this to the "Interior" forum
Not to worry, I'll leave a shadow for ya
Not to worry, I'll leave a shadow for ya
Bobbo
1980 633 CSi Cypress Green/Pearl Beige
2017 X5 M Sport Xdrive 35i Carbon Black/Ivory White
2005 330 Ci ZHP Cabrio Imola Red/Bone/Black