Recommendations for instrument gauge bulb replacements?

[cjomanche]

Sorry if this has been asked a million times.... I searched and found that I need size 194 bulbs for the gauges in the dash, but will I also need the sockets that go with them?  Most of the ones I'm finding on ebay have new sockets to install.  I'd really like to use the stock ones if possible.  Are these sockets just for LED replacements?  Should I just go incandescent?  I'm trying to fix the gauges so my check engine light and transfer case lights go back on.

 

Thanks

[Pete M]

I would get the set with sockets are if the stock sockets won't work, use the new ones    

 

 

any opportunity to reduce the power load on the wires in an old jeep should be taken  

[HOrnbrod]

These are for the indicator lights in the dash, correct? Like the Check Engine light? If so, don't worry about the sockets; you would have a hard time replacing them. Just get a box of 194 bulbs from the Zone or similar and replace all the missing and/or burned out bulbs. They just plug in, no turning, no polarity. You could use LED 194's but they don't dim. They are either ON or OFF with a very sharp cutoff.

[Pete M]

oooo, that would suck.  didnt' think of that.   I like my dash to dim.  

 

 

[Minuit]

Yeah, IMO gauge dimming is critical at the very least. Other stuff like the climate controls and the radio (ahem) is a matter of opinion, but I don't think I could deal with non-dimming gauges.

 

Some of the nicer ones hide a PWM dimming circuit inside the bulb base as far as I know. Not sure about smaller bulbs like 194s. The stock rheostat will not sufficiently dim just the LED by itself.

[cruiser54]

www.onewaylight.com

 

Switch em all to LED. Sold in kits. Nice stuff. 

[Pete M]

Quote

• Dimming should function with all 97-01 sets and white 84-96 sets.  Dimming range is reduced from stock.

 

gives me hope.   anyone tried them?  how much is "reduced".

 

Quote

No warning or info lights in the gauge cluster are replaced, only the main backlighting, turn indicator, and high beam.

 

won't help the OP in this particular instance though.   he'll still need those ones.

[EUREKA]

I recently tired Amazon ASIN: B07S7D16CH

 

They don't dim until you get to the very end of the rheostat, and then the range is tiny.

[EUREKA]

On 11/9/2017 at 4:26 AM, cruiser54 said:

www.onewaylight.com

 

Switch em all to LED. Sold in kits. Nice stuff. 

Can you confirm these have a nice range of dimming?

[cruiser54]

I never dimmed any of mine. I like to see them. 

[EUREKA]

19 minutes ago, cruiser54 said:

I never dimmed any of mine. I like to see them. 

Dang, ok.  I always dim mine, I like to see the road.

[cruiser54]

I can see both. I used green. 

[EUREKA]

I'm seriously considering going red. Never owned a vehicle with red gauge lights but when I've noticed how easy they are on night vision as a passenger. It wouldn't matter as much if they don't dim.

[JustEmptyEveryPocket]

6 hours ago, EUREKA said:

red gauge lights

I've often wondered if this would work as well in real life as it does in my head. If you do it, let me know what you think.

[EUREKA]

Will do. I just ordered the reds. 

 

I'm never bothered by interior lights driving around town, but on those longer, night time, highway trips it's nice to have a dark cabin.

[watchamakalit]

 

The dash lights are the only thing I haven't swapped to led. Mostly because I like to dim mine like other said. Curious to see if we can find a dimmable source.....

[EUREKA]

Well I tried these LED which CLAIM to be dimmable, amazon "dimmable" leds they are not really dimmable. They don't dim until the end of the rheostats range.

 

The proper way to dim led's is via current (or pwm). Varying voltage works when used a signal for a driver to reduce current, but trying to control brightness directly with voltage doesn't work well since LED's have a forward operating voltage that must be met before they light. I happen to own a company that manufactures led horticultural lighting.

[gogmorgo]

Most of my night driving is also done in the middle of nowhere, away from city or industrial lighting with lots of large mobile obstacles that wander onto the roads. It's definitely nicer driving the old Jeep where I can dim everything to near zero than some of our newer work fleet with backlit screens.

I've also been doing some reading into night vision and come to some completely untested conclusions, the biggest being that true night vision is probably not entirely relevant to night driving. True night vision means you're using only your rods in your eyes, which are most sensitive to blue-green light, and not at all sensitive to red, which is why you don't compromise your night vision with red lights no matter how intense they are. But it doesn't take much light in the yellow to blue ranges to overpower the rods and bleach them out, especially in the blue-green where they're most sensitive, putting you back into mostly daytime vision mode, and based on what I've read I'm pretty sure your own headlights will do that to you. The high-beam indicator that you can't dim definitely does. So then we're talking low-light colour vision for night driving, where pupil dilation is more of a factor to seeing than the colour of the light, and any "background" lighting that's more intense than what you're trying to look at is going to constrict your pupils and make it harder to see.

That being said, you're still more sensitive to light in certain colour ranges, amber to yellow in particular, and less sensitive into the red and green and eventually blue range. Everyone has differing sensitivities to colours though, so there's no true one-size-fits-all solution. Red is probably your best bet given it's pretty far outside peak sensitivity for everyone and it's lack of effect on true night vision, but if there's oncoming traffic more than once every 15 minutes, your night vision is unlikely to recover enough for that to be a benefit. Green you'll need to be more careful with as some are pushing into the yellow range and some people have more sensitivity to more green light than others. You have a sensitivity peak again in blue even though you don't have very many cones that can actually see blue light, but it's probably better to avoid blue because it can be harder to focus and lead to more eye strain. I have a vehicle I swapped out the interior lighting with blue LEDS and they kinda feel simultaneously blinding but also too dim to actually see with... but they look cool! White LEDs are typically blue LEDs with a phosphor coating and therefore pretty heavy on blue light and probably not the best.

Obviously if you can just dim the dash lights, none of this is relevant. I'm not convinced that PWM dimming is effective here because it seems to give me eye strain. But again everyone's going to have a differing sensitivity to it. 

Something else I learned during this dive into how lights work that is not at all relevant, other than it being an example of different people having differing sensitivities, there's actual scientific evidence that people with two X chromosomes are more likely to have a fourth type of cone and more range of colour sensitivity than people with a Y chromosome, so guys, your wives could actually be seeing two very different colours sometimes when you think they look close to the same, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

[EUREKA]

You really looked into this! There is a lot to say on this topic and since it is part of my living (and I have a background in biology) I happen to know a bit about it. But since this is a jeep forum I'll try to keep it brief.

 

Human eyes certainty perceive the same mols of photons of light differently, according to wavelength. Blue specifically appears brighter than the same mols of most other wavelengths (a bit confusing because our rod cells are less sensitive to blue photons). This is captured in the metric of "lumens" and why we say "lumens are for humans" (as in not for plants). This perceptual difference is not only a matter of eye cell response (which is similar for all types of cone cells) but also signal interpretation in the brain. We actually use "trichromic simulation" in all but the darkest of settings, which means our brains combine signals from all types of vision cells.

 

"Night vision" has more than one meaning so you are smart to refer to "true night vision" meaning only rods cells are active, it is also called scotopic vision. We are essentially never using only rods or only cones when driving at night. Night driving in the country would use "mescopic vision". But even when using "photopic vision" (cone dominant) the wavelength (as well as quantity) of photons makes a difference. Our cones "wake up" or begin functioning with less exposure to blue light than red.

 

Our headlights certainly are preventing us from ever using true night vision (scotopic) but that does not mean there is no advantage to using headlights that are less blue, or dash lights that are red. Because we will experience less pupil dilatation from these lights, and thus preserve "night vision" (in the laymen sense). Red interior lights can also produce less interference at specific angles or "glare".

 

PWM dimming can cause issues for human vision. It is best used for plant lighting but is not a common way to dim LED's. It has the advantage of potentially reducing duty cycle and heat.

 

I know most of that was just restating what you wrote. Hopefully I added something.

 

[gogmorgo]

Yeah, I’ve really been trying to nail down what’s going on with my vision at night. The most popular “enhancements” have all seemed to make things worse for me. I’ve come to the conclusion that a warm halogen in a DOT housing works with as little interior lighting as I can get away with seems to work best.

 

Somewhat confusingly I’d noticed that the “yellow” settings for the display on an aftermarket stereo I have in the ZJ less straining than some of the others, even though from what I can tell yellow should be more visible. But it’s an RGB led display, so it only simulates yellow by combining green and red wavelengths instead of actually being yellow light.

It’s also reassuring to know that there’s an actual reason LED headlights bother me as much as they do. I’ve been noticing though that some of the higher-end LEDs have been shifting towards warmer whites, which theoretically means less blue light glare, and hopefully that will trickle down to the more affordable options too.

 

But we’re getting pretty far off topic. 

 

[zomeizter]

My brother used to have an '80s beemer that had a very pleasant amber illumination for the instrument cluster and various interior items, this was so pleasing to my eyes and made night driving in that thing very enjoyable. I've tried to reproduce that color on my hoopties' clusters but have failed. IIRC, the bulbs inside the beemer's cluster where halogen but the amber sweetness came from the lenses in the assembly...

[EUREKA]

10 hours ago, gogmorgo said:

Yeah, I’ve really been trying to nail down what’s going on with my vision at night. The most popular “enhancements” have all seemed to make things worse for me. I’ve come to the conclusion that a warm halogen in a DOT housing works with as little interior lighting as I can get away with seems to work best.

 

Somewhat confusingly I’d noticed that the “yellow” settings for the display on an aftermarket stereo I have in the ZJ less straining than some of the others, even though from what I can tell yellow should be more visible. But it’s an RGB led display, so it only simulates yellow by combining green and red wavelengths instead of actually being yellow light.

It’s also reassuring to know that there’s an actual reason LED headlights bother me as much as they do. I’ve been noticing though that some of the higher-end LEDs have been shifting towards warmer whites, which theoretically means less blue light glare, and hopefully that will trickle down to the more affordable options too.

 

But we’re getting pretty far off topic. 

 

I feel that DOT must have allowed headlights to be brighter, thinking that better cut-offs protects other drivers.

[gogmorgo]

1 hour ago, EUREKA said:

I feel that DOT must have allowed headlights to be brighter, thinking that better cut-offs protects other drivers.

Compared to the ECE lighting? The SAE/DOT I wouldn’t say is as bright, although that’s a bad way of putting it. The ECE light is much more focused, with a very distinct illuminated spot and not a ton of light outside of that, where the SAE is generally more of a wash across a wider area, with a hot spot in the middle. The ECE is excellent for throwing light far down the road, but the SAE is better for catching eye shine in the ditches. The thing I don’t like about the ECE is the low beams throw so much light up and right to illuminate road signs that it’s difficult to see anything else when there’s a sign reflecting it all back at you, plus I’ve had to aim them pretty far down to stop getting high-beamed by traffic coming around a corner from my right, to the point that the cutoffs to stop glare to my left mean I can’t see much of that side of the road.

[kidz429]

I got a 2 pack of 194 from O’Reillys just to see if I wanted to go all way and they are dimmable from first turn all the way down. To do all it will be$$. But full range of dimming. Put one in the 4x4 part and also dims great too. 

[EUREKA]

3 hours ago, kidz429 said:

I got a 2 pack of 194 from O’Reillys just to see if I wanted to go all way and they are dimmable from first turn all the way down. To do all it will be$$. But full range of dimming. Put one in the 4x4 part and also dims great too. 

Are you talking about the Sylvania LED version of of the 194 incandescent bulb?