JoshMO

I bought this gauge a few weeks ago and I love the way it looks. At night its a bright blue and the needle is red. The only thing I hate about this gauge is the fact that it is so damn BRIGHT. I was wondering if anyone could give me some tips on how to attach some sort of dimming switch to tone it down a bit.

E-b0la

Solder in a resistor before the bulb/led.

JoshMO

Would it work to solder in a resistor inline on the hotwire If so what resistor should I try? I'm not well versed in the world of resistors etc etc


Edit:
just read up on resistors and I guess the best way to figure out "which" one I would need it to just sample different ones until I get the correct brightness level.


But, I still need to know if it would be safe to solder one inline with the hotwire.

stenseltizm

There should be a dimmer switch on the dash for the rest of your gages correct? find that and pull the plug off the back, there should be two or three wires (depending if your dimmer turns on your dome light at full on). one wire will go directly to the fuse box, and one wire will go to the backlight of your gages. The one that goes to the backlight of your gages is the one you want. tap into it with the hot wire of this gage and it will be dimmed the same amount as your factory gages.

that's a little vague but if you pull a schematic for your gage lighting it will be more clear. what kind of car is this in? I can show you what I did in my DA that works mint.

JoshMO

Its in a 92 civic, and I was thinking about doing the same thing your talking about. So your saying that the dimming switch the controls the factory gauges already reduces the voltage. So by hooking this gauge up with the factory gauges, on the same switch, will automatically dim the boost gauge? Am I correct?


Ninja Edit:
This dimmer only controls the gauges. It does not turn on the dome light.

jmhalder

or instead of getting a resistor from radio shack... get a potentiometer, its really just a variable resistor, kinda like the dimmer **** that was mentioned... as for mine, i just tapped into the radio wiring that has a seperate dimmer wire (that goes to the dimmer pot.) so it dims with all my factory gauges... dont know if hondas have a dimmer wire in the sterio harness

Birdley42008

no, this way is free and easy. If the gauge reacts to the dimmer switch on your dashboard then reverse the wiring so that when you make your inside tach brighter it makes the gauge dimmer. I accidently did it on mine, except i find a common equilibrium where both are visible, haha.

JoshMO

hmm both ways sound tempting. Thanks for the input guys

plymouth

In my k cars i have just used the dash dimmer, on mopars its the orange wire.

if you cant do that +1 for the POT. idea