Switching To LED Illumination?

[Vandal]

Hi all, I've currently got a 1994 Camry I'm working on turning into a show car, one bit at a time, and my current project is to replace the existing lighting and illumination, while keeping the whole set up as stock-looking as possible. Here's what I had in mind:

Firstly, I want to replace the existing instrument display illumination and warning lights with LED lights, either blue or green for the illumination and less important warning lights and red for stuff like low battery, low fuel etc. The existing lighting is your good old-fashioned standard light globes with colored transparent covers. Assuming I can replace those covers, can anyone give me some ideas on how to install the LEDs? I can solder and the old globes are easy enough to get out, but I wouldn't know what resistors to use (if any) or anything like that.

I'm also hoping to replace interior lighting like the ceiling light and the boot light with green or blue LEDs, so I'm pretty much asking the same question here. Any ideas on how to set that up? Any ideas are greatly appreciated, I'm hoping to get all this done before I start my new job in a couple of weeks.

[DJKOR]

When it comes to replacing the dash lights, you have a couple of options really. Firstly you can simply get a direct LED replacement depending on the type of bulb it uses. LED replacements come in all shapes and sizes and the common ones used are T10, T5, and the B8 style. These make it easy to replace the dash lights. My old Camry used 4 T10 bulbs to provide the bulk of the speedo illumination and I changed each bulb over for a blue 1W style T10 replacement and the end result looked sweet.

The T10 design is also used around the car in places like the parkers and number plate lights and these bulb replacements make it easy to change over.

As for changing the dome light, the best LED illumination are the LED arrays that have a bulb adapter to fit. Ones similar to this are really useful. I have one of these in my car and they are pretty bright. You can get insanely bright ones off eBay as well.

As for your boot lights, an LED strip will provide you with some good lighting versus a single bulb replacement. This one here is the one I use, and you can also get it in blue, and maybe even cheaper off eBay.

Alternatively, you can go for the DIY option, but bearing in mind you will need to get your hands on a bulk pack of LED's to make it worth doing yourself. I would have done mine myself, but it was more of the fact that I could save time with pre-made solutions. Plus they are easy to attach and position.

If you do go for DIY, you basic formula for calculating resistor values for LED's is:

R = (Vs - Vl) / I , where:

R - is your resistor value in ohms

Vs - is your supply voltage (best to calculate using 14v in the car)

Vl - is the LED voltage (usually 2v but 4v for blue and white LED's)

I - is the LED forward current in amps (eg. 20mA or 0.02A) this vaires depending on the LED

[Vandal]

Sweet, I never even realized you could get complete replacements. Thanks man!

[elgrande]

Has anyone changed there dash lights on a Camry to LED?

Was lookin at changing mine to white LEDs but was unsure as there is so

many different styles of bulbs out there, dont know which ones shine up the best?

[DJKOR]

Has anyone changed there dash lights on a Camry to LED?

Was lookin at changing mine to white LEDs but was unsure as there is so

many different styles of bulbs out there, dont know which ones shine up the best?

Are you referring to the 07 Camry that you have? If so, they already are LED. All you can do is change the physical LED's themselves to a different colour.

[elgrande]

Oh are they, damm I wish they were abit more brighter like the Aurion dash LoL

I seen the camrys in the US have similar style clusters to the Aurion