Anyone change the 998 gauge cluster lights to LED's?? - Ducati.ms

Wrassemeister · Jun 1st, 2009, 2:48 pm

I dont know if im the only one but the old school bulbs in the 998 gauge cluster are too yellow/dim and make the bike feel dated. Im looking to replace these lights with white led's (194's?) instead to give it a more updated and modern look. Has anyone done this? Is there a diy anywhere on how to pull the cluster apart and replace the bulbs? I tried searching didnt find much.

Wrassemeister · Jun 2nd, 2009, 5:06 pm

no one did this??

DukeDesmo · Jun 2nd, 2009, 5:30 pm

Can't really see why you would want to do it but the bulbs just pull out from the rear of the cluster. They're in rubber holders.

jimmy98 · Jun 2nd, 2009, 8:09 pm

yes, i did this to my 748, don't know if the guages are the same or not, but i did put white led's behind the speedo, and blue led's behind the tach, it does give the numbers a cleaner / crisper look, but for the temp guage, i left it alone, it uses a much smaller bulb

it is kind of a pain in the butt to do it though, front fairing has to come off, and i think it is also necessary to remove the headlamp assy. there was a nut or two behind it holding the cluster in, hope this helps !

ducati_996 · Jun 2nd, 2009, 8:54 pm

I haven't done it to my gauges, but I did replace the 194s in the headlamps with some nice cool white LED. I think they were from http://www.superbrightleds.com 2 years and about 12k later, still no problems.

VolvoWrench · Jun 2nd, 2009, 9:33 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by ducati_996

I haven't done it to my gauges, but I did replace the 194s in the headlamps with some nice cool white LED. I think they were from http://www.superbrightleds.com 2 years and about 12k later, still no problems.

Can you point out exactly which bulbs you used on the superbright website?
I'm looking to replace the pilot bulbs in my head lights.

Wrassemeister · Jun 2nd, 2009, 10:08 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimmy98

yes, i did this to my 748, don't know if the guages are the same or not, but i did put white led's behind the speedo, and blue led's behind the tach, it does give the numbers a cleaner / crisper look, but for the temp guage, i left it alone, it uses a much smaller bulb

it is kind of a pain in the butt to do it though, front fairing has to come off, and i think it is also necessary to remove the headlamp assy. there was a nut or two behind it holding the cluster in, hope this helps !

thanks, I will be installing hid's in the headlights and led's in the pilot bulbs at the same time so I wanted to do everything in one swipe and was planning on taking off the nose fairing anyways.... Were the bulbs in the speedo 194's?

**amullo** · Jun 3rd, 2009, 3:17 am

You might want to rethink LED´s in the instrument cluster..
Those are best kept as "normal" lights since they tend to spread the light more evenly.

I saw one guy on the F650 website that had changed over to LED clusterlights and the light seems painfully bright on some parts of the cluster and leaving other parts almost dark. Doesn´t look "right"
http://f650cs.wikidot.com/instrument-led-bulbs

//amullo

ducati_996 · Jun 3rd, 2009, 6:31 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by amullo

You might want to rethink LED´s in the instrument cluster..
Those are best kept as "normal" lights since they tend to spread the light more evenly.

I saw one guy on the F650 website that had changed over to LED clusterlights and the light seems painfully bright on some parts of the cluster and leaving other parts almost dark. Doesn´t look "right"
http://f650cs.wikidot.com/instrument-led-bulbs

//amullo

I agree with this. I used to install custom LEDs on bikes and got into a few jobs where the customer wanted a particular color in the gauges. LEDs have a very focused light beam as compared to an incandecent bulb, so sometimes its difficult to make everything light up evenly.

As for the running lights inside the headlamp, I used part number WLED-CW6 from http://www.superbrightleds.com and they work great.

jimmy98 · Jun 3rd, 2009, 8:12 pm

Quote:

thanks, I will be installing hid's in the headlights and led's in the pilot bulbs at the same time so I wanted to do everything in one swipe and was planning on taking off the nose fairing anyways.... Were the bulbs in the speedo 194's?

i dont know what kind of bulbs were in there so here are some pics this is one that came out and the blue one is the led i used, and pics of what they look like lit up

the other guys are right about the led's being directional , you can see that some of the numbers on the speedo light up a little brighter than the others, but it doesn't bother me. . . . or you could try some led's like the red one in the pic. those are called refracting? led's i think

i also installed HID headlights 6000k's the bright is brighter but the low beam still sucks , but they look really cool though