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Has anyone figured out a way to install a rheostat for the instrument guages? I can't believe HD runs these full bright 100% of the time! There must be a fix.
Electrically, it isn't hard to do. The wiring diagram shows power for both the bulb socket and the gauge socket being spliced together within the harness. You'd have to isolate the orange wire from each bulb socket, tie them all together, and put a rheostat in-line. You have me actually thinking of doing this now since I've got to go in and change a couple burnt-out bulbs.
Resistors don't work on led lighting. If it has enough voltage/amperage it comes on of it doesn't it stays off. Car manufacturers use leds and use pulse width modulation to change the intensity. Because your eye can't pick up the off times it fools you into thinking its dimmer. More of an average thing. On my 09 the small guages have bulbs Speedo and tach have led lights. Newer I think use all leds. I'm not saying its not possible just would just be a lot of work. If u had both led and bulbs 2 separate conrol systems would be needed,
The gauge bulbs are easy and cheap to do yourself. Just pull the bulb and replace with LED, color of your choice. Personally I'm puzzled by the notion that they are too bright and need to be turned down. I have swapped mine out for blue, and they show fine at night, but the light is pretty low, hard to see that they are on when it is dusk.
The speedo and tachometer lights are soldered to a circuit board and very difficult to do yourself if you dont have a lot of experience.
As mentioned there are plenty of folks that do these well, and for a modest fee.
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Instrument Guage Lighting
