44067gtdart
Well-Known Member
I just replaced the circuitboards in my 1970 Plymouth duster. Is there a way to test the lights before I put the cluster back in the dash?
Rallye dash lights bench test
- Thread starter 44067gtdart
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Green dots are ground.
Other dots are bulb and associated pin.
Follow the cir board traces.
This works on all bulbs except one, the exception.
Attach a jumper from 12v battery negitave to a green point ( screw head)
And battery positive to each respective post and the bulb associated with it should light.
Exception to above...
The bulb with red dots on the left side cir board in the photo.
You put batt negitave to one red dot post and batt positive to the other red dot post .
Other dots are bulb and associated pin.
Follow the cir board traces.
This works on all bulbs except one, the exception.
Attach a jumper from 12v battery negitave to a green point ( screw head)
And battery positive to each respective post and the bulb associated with it should light.
Exception to above...
The bulb with red dots on the left side cir board in the photo.
You put batt negitave to one red dot post and batt positive to the other red dot post .
44067gtdart
Well-Known Member
Great.. Thank you
44067gtdart
Well-Known Member
I will do that.. Thank you
I happened to have a model railroad transformer, adjustable from 0 to 24 volts. It made bench testing easy — no clumsy jumper cables and I didn't have to pull a battery from a car, I just added alligator clips to the output wires.
cudamark
Well-Known Member
Keep in mind that if you're using LED lights, you may have to rotate them 180 degrees to get them to work.
Oh yeah, also remember the fuel gauge runs at lower voltage, so always run the 12V through the IVR circuit — don't connect directly to the gauge pins if you are testing the gauges as well as the lamps.
44067gtdart
Well-Known Member
Yes, I did use LED lights. They look so much better than the stock lights. And brighter. I did read about rotating the lights previously, but thank you for the tip.
44067gtdart
Well-Known Member
A definite improvement.
Are those blue or bright white? I tried blue LEDs because I thought it might be a neat effect, but I found out I was almost colorblind to that wavelength — I could tell they were illuminated but I couldn't read any of the markings at all. I hadn't taken into account that there are blue lenses on the cluster that shift the bulb color toward blue, based on the assumption that one is using warm incandescent bulbs, so I wound up using "warm white" LEDs to get the same "color" as original — pretty much "white" white.
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