How to Colour code switches, instruments with LED bulbs

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Prufrock

What great entertainment - thread subject change - this is!

Prufrock.

My fault! Shouldn't have mentioned water injection!

[ian2000t]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Your reply came while i was replying to popuptoaster about the positioning of the metering needle. My system relies purely on the venturi effect caused by air flwoing through the inlet system and as such compressed air would end up causing the water to flow backwards in my system.

Are you still running the SU carbs on your Mini? If so, you could use the breather tube as a site to fit the metering needle as it needs to be upstream of the throttle butterfly so it is not subject to pure inlet manifold vacuum. I'm fairly sure it would improve things on your Mini but not knowing what other mods you have can't really say much more.
Using the pressurised system on your D24TIC is a good idea if you're running 16psi of boost, if nothing else it will help cool things down to an acceptable level without melting pistons!

Aye, that's one reason I run it - the other to "steam clean" the piston rings of any vegetable oil deposits built up on cold starts.

Yes, still got the old SU HIF44 on the Mini, other mods aren't too severe - slightly better cam, 9.75:1 compression, better inlet/airfilter/exhaust etc, and then the MegaJolt mappable ignition. Will definitely give it a try when you do a right up.

Re: pre-turbo water injection. It "can" work well. However, some say it erodes the turbo vanes over time. Also, with an intercooler you can get "puddling". The idea of an intercooler is to cool the compressed inlet air. Doing this can cause the "mist" to condense in the intercooler causing puddles of water. I was going to do this for cheapness, but decided against it for those 2 reasons.


Edit: Can an admin split this into 2 topics?

[Laird Scooby]

Ah-ha! Didn't consider "puddling". Last turbo vehicle i had was about 5 years back, Astra van that i used for work.
Before that i hadn't really discovered water injection so not tried it on anything else, although i've only had 2 previous turbos.

Good idea about splitting the thread - I've started a new thread and here's the link to the Water Injection thread.

I've answered the bit about the HIF44 there as far as i can remember how they are set up.

[ton246]

Sorry to spoil the party, but going back to the original topic, I have just fitted all the LEDs in the dash, and as I previously said in another thread, non of my switch lights worked, only the dash lights. Now after changing them all.............still the same Checked the fuses and all good in there, it's just the dash lights that work, non of the switches light up. Any ideas ?

[Laird Scooby]

Hmm, that's an odd one! The usual suspect is blown bulbs in the switch illumination. It could be a problem with one of the multi-plugs on the back of the instrument cluster as one of them contains the link to give cluster lighting and switch lighting - with that plug removed you get no cluster or switch lights.

I assume you tried the LEDs both ways round in the switch lighting and also you tried spreading the wire "legs" out a bit on the LEDs to ensure contact?

I'll have a look at the diagram later and see if i can figure out the most common failure point where the switch lighting might be lost.

[popuptoaster]

Does the black plastic surround in front of the instrument cluster just lever out on a 940 or is it clipped in from somewhere?

I have a full set of LED bulbs waiting to go in that i haven't got round to yet, but seeing yours look so nice makes me want to make time to get mine done.

[ton246]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Hmm, that's an odd one! The usual suspect is blown bulbs in the switch illumination. It could be a problem with one of the multi-plugs on the back of the instrument cluster as one of them contains the link to give cluster lighting and switch lighting - with that plug removed you get no cluster or switch lights.

I assume you tried the LEDs both ways round in the switch lighting and also you tried spreading the wire "legs" out a bit on the LEDs to ensure contact?

I'll have a look at the diagram later and see if i can figure out the most common failure point where the switch lighting might be lost.

Put in a total of 5 LEDs to the switches, odds would be at least a couple of them would be fitted correctly, dash lights up no problem. Must be something that effects them all, as you say.
One good thing came about tho, the connector was off the back of the fan switch, so plugged it in and da dah.....working fan now.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by ton246

Put in a total of 5 LEDs to the switches, odds would be at least a couple of them would be fitted correctly, dash lights up no problem. Must be something that effects them all, as you say.
One good thing came about tho, the connector was off the back of the fan switch, so plugged it in and da dah.....working fan now.

I think the fan is a clue as to what may be wrong with the switch illumination - question is where is the connector that is disconnected and more importantly, why have they been disconnected? Was it something relatively innocent such as removal of an aftermarket stereo or similar or has it been done to hide an imminent problem?

You could try removing the instrument cluster again and then checking the copper contacts in all the multi-plugs that plug into it. They should be a nice sort of banana shape, sometimes they'll go flat from being in place too long and can be teased back to shape with a small screwdriver or similar - might fix your fault and costs nothing to try and may cure a few other things such as erratic gauge readings etc.
If you do try that, have a look inside the dash to see if there are any loose multi-plugs floating around (other than the ones from the cluster) that have a corresponding multi-plug somewhere nearby. If so, and the wire colours seem to match, it might be worth trying to reconnect them to see if that's your problem.

[ton246]

Here's a before shot of the dash lights.......




And after change to green LED's........



Doesn't look as "green" here, as in the flesh, so to speak.

Edit....For the observant amongst you, no, I havn't changed the camera to summer time yet, but I have now lol.

[Laird Scooby]

Nice one Tony!

You say it doesn't look as green in the pic as in the flesh, that's probably the same reason as when i took my pics mine came out a bit out of focus and dark, because the camera is over-compensating for the light. Or something like that!