My 1986 Mercury Grand Marquis

[Georges86]

Thinking about lighting now.

I had some glass housing Hellas on my old Jeep Cherokee, with really nice bright white bulbs. Wonder if I could find something similar for boxes.

Did an LED for the license plate light



George

[Georges86]

200 miles put on it today,

Went for a nice 10 mile hike at White Pines State Park in Mt. Morris Illinois, and ice cream in Rochelle to pick back up those lost calories, back to Chicago then.

Had to wash it when we got home, the bugs were massacred on the front. Running excellent and got 23.1 mpg on this tank.

George

[nfldfordltd]

Smart looking car sir.

[Georges86]

Smart looking car sir.

Thank you!


Ordering LEDs for the cluster soon, how many bulbs are there for illumination? Not going to mess with any of the warning lights, don't see the point.

George

[VicCrownVic]

Thank you!


Ordering LEDs for the cluster soon, how many bulbs are there for illumination? Not going to mess with any of the warning lights, don't see the point.

George

George, there are 5 illumination bulbs on an '89 and older MGM cluster. 2 on the fuel gauge side and 3 on the speedo side.
I didn't bother swapping bulbs on the warning lights either. Although there are 10 warning/indicator bulbs on an '89-older MGM cluster (looking at my parts cluster right now).

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Thank you!


Ordering LEDs for the cluster soon, how many bulbs are there for illumination? Not going to mess with any of the warning lights, don't see the point.

George

If you're changing colors, you'll need to remove the gauges to pop out those color filters. Super simple to remove. When I took out my cluster to redo the lighting, I took the front face cover off, unscrewed, and left the shifter indicator in the car so I wouldn't have to mess with removing the cable from the column and possibly damaging that little collar. That made one less thing to take apart to get the cluster out.

I also repainted the needles orange while I had it apart. I did it from a stand point of making it stand out from the background.

[Georges86]

Thanks! I really appreciate the tips.

I was planning on staying green, but blue has crossed my mind. Not sure if it'd look "rice or nice"

Do you happen to remember how many 194 bulbs it takes?

Also the HVAC would have to be done if I went blue, did you know the number of those off hand?

Sorry for all the questions!

George

[DerekTheGreat]

Seems everybody is changing their stuff so whenever I see OEM and OEM on purpose it is refreshing.

[VicCrownVic]

...
Do you happen to remember how many 194 bulbs it takes?
...

LOL, look back to the previous page.

Thank you!


Ordering LEDs for the cluster soon, how many bulbs are there for illumination? Not going to mess with any of the warning lights, don't see the point.

George

George, there are 5 illumination bulbs on an '89 and older MGM cluster. 2 on the fuel gauge side and 3 on the speedo side.
I didn't bother swapping bulbs on the warning lights either. Although there are 10 warning/indicator bulbs on an '89-older MGM cluster (looking at my parts cluster right now).

...
I was planning on staying green, but blue has crossed my mind. Not sure if it'd look "rice or nice"
...
Also the HVAC would have to be done if I went blue, did you know the number of those off hand?
...

I have blue LEDs in The Ice Car, but that's a '91 so the cluster is different. I'm not sure how it would look in a real box cluster. You actually wouldn't need to remove the blue filters with blue LEDs, the light might be a smidge brighter without them, but blue light through blue filters shouldn't be a problem.
I believe there is just one bulb for the HVAC control head. If you have blue in there you will have a problem with no light shining through the red parts, although I wonder if it would be possible to de-solder one of the SMDs from a red LED bulb and solder it in place of on of the blue SMDs. You might need to put the blue LED bulb in first to determine which SMD is closest/most likely to shine at the red portion of the face.

Edit: Actually, I have at least one blue LED at home that I could hook up to a power supply in my parts cluster to see how it looks. If I can find any more blue LEDs I can throw a few in there, but I'm not sure if I have any more left.

[Georges86]

LOL it was almost 3 am give me a break!

I appreciate it though, I'll probably stay with green as everything seems to flow better with that color.

I thought about that with the HVAC, unless, you used a blue film filter on the back of the plastic itself? Probably not gonna do it, just thinking out loud.

Thanks again for the help guys it really is appreciated!

George

[VicCrownVic]

You're good, I just wanted to point it out since the answer slipped to the previous page (at least on a PC with my current forum layout preferences) making it easy to miss.

I cut a piece of blue acrylic and placed it inside my clock to try to make it blue, I'm not sure that route was worth the effort. It's considerably bluer than stock now but not an exact match to the LEDs. Also, it's harder to see the clock during the day.
Quite some time ago I came across a suggestion from another member to use stain glass paint but that might be a bit harder to remove than the film filter you suggested.

[Georges86]

Found a beat Vic in a Kmart parking lot today and an Aero Marq parked next to each other.

You know what I had to do.







George

[Tiggie]

George I think the beat Vic wants to come home with you. Dash pad looks possibly good. Your passenger looks happy!

[sly]

That beat one looks better than my beater.

[knucklehead0202]

That's awesome! I walked out of the store one day and somebody had parked another box next to mine. Glad to still see people driving them around. Pretty unusual around here.