Thanks Roda50. I've tried where possible to dispense with conventional bulbs with the exception of headlights and fit neons or LEDs throughout. My dash is actually hard-wired now after numerous problems with that silly plastic membrane but its not a job for a newbie and took me a long while to solder everything and get it all working properly.
Another mod I'm working on is to fit small festoon bulb holders (similar to stock courtesy lights) in the original space occupied by the dash bulb holders and use the newer LED festoon bulb equivalents - I think they'll light the dash better than the present neon I'm using and make replacement (if they ever need them) that much easier. Certainly for exterior tail lights (and you need to select the right kind of LED bulbs), the response time compared to a standard bulb is significantly faster and I figure there is a safety improvement to be had by making the swap. I noticed this when I plugged in a trailer board to the towing socket as the board is fitted with ordinary bulbs and the brake lights lag noticeably compared to my other rear lights which are all LEDs now.
I must add, that the quality of LED tail light bulbs isn't always good in that some of the far east ones don't seem to have resistors that handle up to 14v, leading to premature failure. The new batch I'm using, which has a better light spread pattern, seems fine. You also have to fit a different flasher relay if you switch to LED indicators as the load is different with LEDs, but the flasher relays are readily available online.
I also fitted a neon underneath the glove box on passenger side as my passenger/s sometimes drop stuff and couldn't locate them in the dark - this seemed to cure that but I didn't like it on drivers side (too distracting). I use patio LEDs in the back to light the floor area and have left these on for days with no drop in battery voltage so they're very efficient, something worth thinking about if you want to be less reliant on hookup. If you apply that philosophy to power consumption throughout, the chances of a flat battery dimish. Theres no shortage of posts on here regarding flat batteries but I've reached a stage now where if I do leave my lights on all night, it'll still start in the morning. It also means that if you were unfortnate enough to break down in an unlit and awkward spot, you can guarantee that the lights will shine all night quite happily. With conventional bulbs, if you leave a vehicle parked for several hours with the hazards going, the battey voltage will drop like a stone
- been there. done that, hence the change.
As a quick fix for dash bulbs you can just fit LEDs with a suitable resistor and wire them to lighting circuit, ignoring the dash membrane altogether. Same goes for heater lever illumination and any other dash lighting you might want to add. The colour blue seems to look the best but theres a wide choice available these days.
Before LED bulb replacements were so freely available, I smashed and decored (for want of a better description) sidelight bulbs then soldered a resistor to a 10mm LED, passing the resistor down through bulb body and soldering other LED leg to the bulb body. It was a rather rough n ready (if not fiddly) solution but it worked and those same bulbs are being used as sidelights even now. Much brighter than stock and will probably outlast me
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