• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

New instrument lamps

Share this page

Nelson

Nelson

Jedi Warrior
Country flag
Offline
I have a new wiring harness from AH Spares. The lamp sockets for the tach and speedo have a traditional screw socket for each and also a different type of socket for the second lamp in each. The second sockets appear to take bulbs with flat rather than round bases. The connections are adjacent to each other in the sockets. My catalogs only show screw-in or bayonet type bases for the lamps. Should I just solder the old lamp sockets onto the new wires or how do I get lamps to fit the new sockets?
 
That is exactly what i did in a couple of places.
 
Does the socket look like it would accept a bulb like that shown in the link below?
https://shop.wemoto.com/pictures/bulbs/capless.jpg

The last harness I bought had no screw in bases at all and took this kind of bulb. I had no trouble finding lots of bulbs to choose from at my local auto parts store.

You could solder the old screw in bases to your new harness if it's important to you to keep that part of your car original. However, it's a part of the car that only you are likely to see and the wedge base bulbs are readily available. The screw in lamps have to be ordered from the usual host of British parts suppliers.
 
That lamp would fit into my sockets. If my local car parts place can supply a bulb for my sockets I'll go that route. I wouldn't have any problem, though, with soldering my old sockets into place after making sure the contacts are clean.
 
I had the same issue with my harness from Moss. My local store was able to get me bulbs that fit.
 
I'm still using the old school stuff but I want brighter on the tach and speedo. I "modded" the fuel and oil/temp gauges and they're nice and bright at night but the main two are terrible, what's the easiest way to brighten these guys up? get some LED bulbs or what?
(I'm currently redoing a stock dash so now's the time to "fix" this)
BTW the harness is new (though older stock) and I've cleaned up every connection. Could be the wrong bulbs though, there was an issue with an order last year......I better check I guess...
 
I bought some led bulbs (I think they're called E9's) for my gauges and had mixed results. They're way brighter, WAY brighter, but the light is a cool blue instead of warm yellow. I recommend you stick with the yellow. You could drill another hole behind the tach and speedo and install a second light if you need more light.
 
Thanks, I hate the phoney LED color as much as the dimness. I'll use good old incandescence with more POWER or something.....foil, double 'em up, higher wattage....something
 
jvandyke said:
I'll use good old incandescence with more POWER or something.....foil, double 'em up, higher wattage....something
Click to expand...

One way to brighten them up some is to bypass the dimmer switch (when would you dim them anyway) also, throw in an inline fuse
 
no rheostat on '63s though, lucky they stopped using candles for illumination in '61
 
Back
Top