Gauge Cluster Lighting

[dominoSLEV6]

Have you considered getting the lit faces on ebay?

Am I the only one that doens't like these things?

My friend put them in his cavalier and I felt like I was transported back to the 90's when glow in the dark things were cool.

Hyper bright white LEDs are the way to go.

If you can make your gauge lok as sexy as the infamous bright white maxima gauges, you've done good soldier.

-chris

[QuickSEV6]

This is what I have now:


I kind of like it, however, the down side...

To eliminate green light leaking through the cracks, I removed all of the light bulbs from the cluster.
This creates another problem. I can't see needles or odometer.
How to solve: Lit needles.
I found them on Ebay about three years ago. They do look nice, but the are difficult to install. I had to shave off the orange color from the needle backing and one bulb isn't bright enough to illuminate the entire odometer. So, I need more needle lights. Can't find them on Ebay anymore. Also, after I removed the needles, the fuel gauge doesn't read properly and I never see temp gauge move.
I just bought another cluster off of Ebay, so I can experiment and try different things with it.

Your hyper-white idea sounds nice. Any ideas how to achieve it?

[funboy102]

Your hyper-white idea sounds nice. Any ideas how to achieve it?

This is what I got,


and I used these,



PIAA Xtreme White Bulbs...

For the record, I'd only replaced 4 bulbs, the one on the very very right is still the stock green bulb. They look really nice in real life, the picture doesn't do it justice...

[SolAraB]

^^^^^^^So did you just plug and play with those bulbs....and why didnt you just replace all of the bulbs?

[funboy102]

ohh, well, it IS plug and play, and why didn't I? well, what happen was, in my old car (94 Camry) it only needed 4 194 bulbs to light up the IP. But on the Solara, you need 5. So when I transfered them over, yeah, that's what happened. One of thse days I might change the 5th one, but in real life, it's not as bad as it seem in the picture, like honest, you won't notice it that much.

[SolAraB]

Coo haha i thought you just left it in to make it look like v-tec or something kicks in at that rpm.....i actually like those kinds of custom designs....and if i squint a little your pic looks dam good....haha

[QuickSEV6]

Your hyper-white idea sounds nice. Any ideas how to achieve it?

This is what I got,


and I used these,



PIAA Xtreme White Bulbs...

For the record, I'd only replaced 4 bulbs, the one on the very very right is still the stock green bulb. They look really nice in real life, the picture doesn't do it justice...

No offense, but that is pretty far from hyper-white.

This is hyperwhite.

I may try this with my new cluster.
If you want to see how it was done, click here:
http://www.v6performance.net/forums/sho ... hp?t=71207

[made in china]

You guys are barking up the wrong tree with putting LEDs and electroluminescent gauge faces in your Solaras. For all the effort of stuffing those crappy LEDs in there you could have just swapped in the ES300 Optitron cluster.

[SolAraB]

^^^^ I dont no...thats looks pretty nice but i am so used to the Solara design.....plus i like the solara design better......the es300's design looks very plain

[CASTRO]

You guys are barking up the wrong tree with putting LEDs and electroluminescent gauge faces in your Solaras. For all the effort of stuffing those crappy LEDs in there you could have just swapped in the ES300 Optitron cluster.

holy damn! is the gluster a direct swap? if not, what did you have to do to get it to work? VERY interested.

[made in china]

^^^^ I dont no...thats looks pretty nice but i am so used to the Solara design.....plus i like the solara design better......the es300's design looks very plain

I kind of agree, but I don't like the plain jane Solara gauges much either. It's either Solara gauges with spotty LED lighting, Indiglo Gauges (which I like certain styles but my car has the SECURITY LED) or ES300 gauges. The ES300 Optitron gauges look awesome in person. The camera shows the needles as orange, but they are very bright, deep red. And the white is very pure, so actually the cluster looks better than the pics seem.

Castro, I will go ahead and post a DIY soon, I am going to get pics of my wiring conversion. Basically, to do this you need a decent ES300 cluster (got mine for under $60 with 80K from eBay) with the cut ES300 harness and you need to swap in the ES300 connectors. If you can do a decent job installing a car stereo, you can do this swap. The ES300 cluster bolts in perfectly with no mods and the trim bezel fits perfect. Remember a ES300 is a Camry/Solara

[CASTRO]

allright many thanks man! BTW, what year are those es300 gauges from exactly? I saw a bunch on ebay but dont know what year to start looking for. Nice to know that it bolts right up without cutting or modding the surrounds. Im good with wiring so redoing it shouldnt be a challenge, only part is which wires to tap or directions on which wire goes to where. Thanks again for all the help. btw, i've got an auto, any chance you could look into getting the auto lights to work like stock? i know you have a 5sp so it doesnt matter to you. It'd be a great help esp since you have allready worked out most of the connections.

[made in china]

I made a color coded excel chart to show exactly how to swap the wiring. I also included the conversions for AT cars and cars with TRAC.

The correct years for the cluster are 97-01 ES300.

[made in china]

allright many thanks man! BTW, what year are those es300 gauges from exactly? I saw a bunch on ebay but dont know what year to start looking for. Nice to know that it bolts right up without cutting or modding the surrounds. Im good with wiring so redoing it shouldnt be a challenge, only part is which wires to tap or directions on which wire goes to where. Thanks again for all the help. btw, i've got an auto, any chance you could look into getting the auto lights to work like stock? i know you have a 5sp so it doesnt matter to you. It'd be a great help esp since you have allready worked out most of the connections.

BTW, the connectors are very similar between ES and Camry, they are the same style. But the ES uses 4 connectors, I believe it's a 10pin, two 13pin and one 16pin, where as the Camry uses two 13pin and one 16pin. Also, almost all the wires are in different locations in the connector, however I only had to splice about 6 or 7 wires, the others just swapped because the connectors can be released and disassembled then re-configured. It's not that big of a deal.

Even though the ES has 10 more connections, there are a few unused ones, and the extra ones over a Camry are for things our Camry's don't have like HID warning and front bulb out, low oil level, etc. However everything the Camry has shows up fine in the ES cluster.

[cduluk]

Hey guys, does anyone happen to have a copy of any of the wiring diagrams "made in china" mentioned above to convert the plugs from toyota to lexus? I'm trying to do the same thing but can't figure out the wiring... Thanks!