Dash light bulb cover/diffusers

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phish1270

phish1270

phish1270
Joined
May 18, 2009
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Iron Station, NC
I have my cluster out of my '65 Barracuda to clean it & paint it. I am going to replace all the bulbs, clean the contacts, clean the lenses, etc. I noticed that it is just 3 bulbs that light up the whole gauge cluster & they are covered with blue covers. Are those covers used as a diffuser? Is it possible to get more light by removing them or will it not spread the light out enough? Has anyone removed these? Any help/advice would be great. I could remove them, try it & glue them back in if it does not look right but I thought I would ask first to see if anyone had any first hand experience. Thanks!
 
They're just to tint the light greenish; go ahead and remove 'em if you like. I often do. There is one good option for brighter bayonet-base bulbs to fit the dash bulb holders used through '65. It is this one. The stock bulbs produce 25 lumens; these upgrades produce 85 lumens. Wattage is higher (6 vs. 4) but I have never had (or seen) a problem using these bulbs -- though if you run them at full intensity for long enough, in theory you could begin to soften the blue-green caps, so you might want to remove those.

The "LED bulbs" you'll find all over the net would not be a good choice. Their light output is highly directional, so your dash illumination would be spotty with bright areas and dark areas. The reason the gauge cluster housing is painted white inside is because the light radiating in a spherical pattern from the bulb needs to bounce around behind the gauges to light everything up evenly.

For the '66-up wedge-base bulb holders (which you can install in your '65 cluster if you like) there are lots more bulb options. There's a wedge-base version of the linked 85-lumen bulb, there are other clear-glass bulbs in numerous different output levels, there are good amber bulbs, etc.
 
Thanks for the info guys.
Dan - my dash has the 158 or 194 style bulbs. I bought some of the Sylvania 2825s that I saw recommended in a previous thread. This is hopefully only temporary for now due to finances & the stage of my project. I am planning on adding new aftermarket quad gauges to be able to monitor everything better & more accurately but I do not have $500 laying around right now. I took the dash out to give it a quick face lift with some paint & figured I would try some brighter bulbs. I would rather have white & visible over light greenish tint & squinting.
Thanks again!
 
The diffusers capture the bulb so it doesn't fall into the cluster if it should fall out of its socket.
 
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