I've never been a huge fan of the orange glow from the dash, and having to replace those godawful tiny bulbs on occasion, so I treated myself to a whole £30 worth of LEDs for the dash and centre console. £15 for a collection of lights for the instrument cluster, and another £15 for the ones for the centre console which are a little more specialised.
I'm sorry for the terrible photos throughout in this, they were all taken by my phone since the wife's got the camera with her on holiday, so needs must.
The before shot
Note how orange everything is? Ugh! Also the light's out on the rear window heater.
First things first, the instrument cluster. This is pretty easy to remove, just get your fingers at the lower corners of the surround just in front of the cluster and pull, then undo three screws and the whole thing can be pulled forward, undo the two plugs on top and it comes out pretty easily.
The bits I'll be replacing are those black twist-to-lock things which each hold tiny incandescent bulbs. I'm replacing them with these
They need a nice wide flat-blade screwdriver to secure, and because they're LEDs (and therefore polarised) you also need to make sure they go the "correct" way around. The only way to work that out with these ones (because they're unmarked) is to try until you get something that lights up. This made the whole process take a lot longer than it could have otherwise.
First attempt
I had to do a lot of work in the car in the end, but more on that later.
The originals compared to the LEDs on the right. Note how several of the originals are quite burnt (even though they still worked).
If you look back at the first picture you'll see there's some light-bleed from the fan speed position indicator. This is why. I'm guessing someone had pulled it out earlier and broken the tab, sadly a new one from Lings is almost £20, so I'll have to shop around. In the mean time this can go back in place.
The fan controls, a unit worth over £900 according to Lings
those two grey things hold lights which fire into some clear acrylic light-guides, they get replaced with these (originals on the left, LEDs to the right).
Sadly I didn't take any shots of the lower controls (AC, rear window heater, and air recirc buttons), but the idea is much the same, unscrew it from the console, unclip the old lights, clip in the new. Those ones are a little different in that they're longer, and more of a ******* to remove. I spent quite a while pulling bulbs out to rotate them 180°, then try again. For the console it's quite easy, turn on the headlights and see what lights up, rotate them if they don't. For the dash however... The bulbs you're putting in place are for indicators, dial backlights, high-beam, key security (that little green key that lights up when you first place the key in the ignition)
Eagle-eyed among you may have noticed two missing bulbs in my cluster. Anyone know what those are for?
I bought the following kits:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264190515673 - for the centre console
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/263671355306 - for the gauges
The final result:
Much less orange where it counts (inner ring of speedo, gradations between major marks, etc.). I quite like it.
Now I need to re-code the radio, find the clip that fell off the bottom section of the console, and clean up the lock-nut for the gear knob since I was a little careless when unscrewing it