I was just trying to come up with a poor mans indiglo-type gauge setup and got to thinking about black light. I believe they now make small black light LEDs that you could install in the dash and hook up to run when the light switch is on. (5mm UV blacklight LEDs for $1.75 each: http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bi...D-2&type=store)

If you made your own white face gauge set you would end up with a nice indiglo-type glowing gauge setup once you turn them on at night right? I believe standard white paper would glow, hopefully the printer ink for the gauge markings would not. If the white paper doesn't glow by itself they sell various transparent black light paint that you could spray coat the paper with prior to printing the actual gauges on it. You could possibly experiment with using stencils to get different color glowing on the redline and such if you wanted to get fancy.

Anyone ever seen/heard of anything like this and I missed it, or is this just plain a stupid idea?

I think the effect might be pretty cool. I've already done the whole scan the gauges and make your own white ones deal (I believe I scanned the 140mph Camaro ones everyones been using), I don't see this as being much more work with a nice effect at night...

Thoughts, ideas?

 

I think that is a sweet idea. I would be interested!:hail:

 

I was just thinking about this last night. I'm gonna try some different things and see how they turn out. Might as well since the tach is out getting repaired and calibrated.

 

i already have the white gauges... if i were to buy leds how would i connectt hem up into the backlights of the dash? do they plug in like the original ones?

 

seems as thought it might be worth looking in to.

 

For anyone interested this tech article https://www.thirdgen.org/newdesign/tech/leddash.shtml covers the install of LEDs, don't see why the blacklight LEDs would be different. I have no idea about the brightness rating on these though (but since we're after glow and not complete lighting it would be different anyway). I haven't gotten around to messing with this anymore yet though I still intend too.

If anyone happens to have a regular blacklight sitting around that they could experiment with for a bit it would help. Need to find out exactly how the printer paper and standard printer ink react to the blacklight before we get too worried with the LEDs and their install... May not be a feasable way to get the glowing effect on either the paper or the ink, which makes the rest of this idea worthless...

 

Sounds like a cool idea, but im thinking it might look a bit cheesy unless you are really careful. And also depending on what kind of lights you have in your dash, like leds, they might only illuminate their local area. Like there would be bright spots only where the leds are. Idk, you should definitely give it a try though!

While we are talking about blacklights, I found this site that tells you how to put blacklights inside your car. I kinda want to try it with my car.

http://www.squidoo.com/car-black-lights