Dash Lights

I have a question about how dash lighting works in cars, at least in general. It is my understanding that most cars use incandescent bulbs with a filter in front of them to create the illumination color seen on illuminated button labels and instrument panels. If I wanted to match the dash lights to the color of the empeg and my future eclipse head unit could I not just one-by-one replace the filters in front of the dash lights?

If anyone has tried changinging the color of there dash lighting I would appreciate your input.

Stu

Usually the instrument panel color is determined by the silkscreen printing on the plastic sheets of the instrument panel inserts. It's not usually a filter over the light bulbs. You would have to make/find alternate instrument panel inserts, not a trivial task.

Something to keep in mind is that the empeg's VFD is simply a different kind of light than the instrument panel lights, and in most cases there is little you can do to make it match exactly. Instrument panel lights are diffuse, shining through milky plastic sheeting with flat areas of color. The silkscreen printing on the plastic sheet determines the shape of the numbers and symbols.

The empeg VFD, on the other hand, is direct-view fluorescent pixels, and it's not diffused at all. This gives the light a completely different quality. So there's little chance of you being able to match its appearance to your dash exactly.

The best you can hope for is to get in the same neighborhood (greenish dash=green empeg, bluish dash=blue empeg).

I have a few blue LED's replacing the white ones in the A/C controls and such around the head unit. They need to be redone as they look like crap at the moment, and 3 of them burned out due to incorrect resistors that were installed (i'm doing this myself next time, instead of the way it was done by my installer.. by just trial and error). It WILL look bad ass when i finish with it, and it's doable.

Thanks, in my car though (a 2000 Eclipse) the the button labels , ac, and numerals on the dash are a milky white color, although the color that shines through is orange. This is the source of my assumption of the the filter. Yes, the color of the turn signals and a few others are in the silkscreening (red, blue etc.), but I don't care about those. I really would like to go in and change the orange to blue or the blue-green of the unfiltered empeg vacuum fluorescent. The head unit I want doesn't come in orange, so changing the empeg to orange wouldn't work for me. I don't care if it's an exact match, but an orange dash and a blue or blue-green empeg/headunit just doesn't look right to me.

Any more ideas? Thanks!

Stu

Is it easy to get at the instrument cluster and other portions of the dash?

I have a Toyota 4runner that uses standard peanut bulbs. You are correct in your assumption (at least in my case)
that the bulbs have a colored rubber filter. I switched my dash lighting from green to blue. I was able to find the same bulbs at the Chevy dealer, which were used in their truck dashboards to illuminate the high beam indicator. The high beam in my truck used a clear bulb to light a colored dash indicator.
Hope this helps.

" in my car though (a 2000 Eclipse) "

http://www.eclipseforums.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17982

http://www.eclipseforums.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14916

You really need to check this site out if you own an Eclipse.

I'm thinking of doing the same thing. Everything stated above is correct - it will be tough changing the stock orange to anything else besides red, because of the tint on the gauge faces themselves. Blue lights would look like mud. However, red bulbs might match the red empeg faceplate perfectly, I understand it has an orange tint to it as well. You could do it with one or two bulbs to find out. I do think that the "amber" faceplate should be called "yellow" - I don't think it matched our dashes (I have a 2001 Eclipse) very well at all. I'm aiming for a red faceplate with some red dash bulbs installed, and hoping they look good together. If not, I give up!

Funny, I'm going to pull my dash apart and change bulbs just to match my new toy!

I think I'm going to try to change the dash color to green or blue anyway, because in addition to the Empeg, I am going to add an Eclipse (Fujitsu Ten) head unit which has a combination of blue-green and blue VFD elements. Besides the red filter for the Empeg is very dim, so I want to stick with a green, blue, or possibly smoke filter. Thanks to those links, I can start to plan how to accomplish the blue or green color change. I can see why the blue might not look good around the red areas of the instrument cluster. I thought that there would be discrete bulbs for each of the colors. I guess I will have to devise a way to isolate the various colors so they all look the way they are supposed to and yet turn the orange lights to blue or green.

Stu

I have extremely close to an exact match in my car -- I just bought a BMW and a red faceplate. I can see how it would be much more difficult to match in other cars, though. I'll consider myself lucky

Don't know about your eclipse, but my Chevy dash uses regular 194 automotive bulbs to light the cluster. You can get colored bulbs from http://www.4apc.net/. Don’t buy just any colored bulb, most automotive stores carry dyed bulbs will fade over time, I know apc sells tinted bulbs which are better.

Tom