Happy Sunday all!

Was wondering if anyone had any info on the light dimmer? How it works, fuses, connections, trouble shooting, past posts etc?

 

For high beam/low beam headlights?

Or the instrument lights?

Cheers
DD

 

Hi Doug!
Dashboard.

Thank you!

 

Chris,
it is a rheostat (dimmer), like a volume pot in the radio. It dims or brightens all the dash gauge lights and a little of the fiber optic lights.

is yours not working?

try turning it fully clockwise and counter clockwise many times to see if it starts "dimming" again. They get oxidated inside for lack of use, they rarely go bad.

however, it is known the Jaguar gauge lights are not very bright, (this happens in all Jaguars since the 1940s), and many people put higher wattage bulbs behind each gauge, melting the green color overlay inside the gauges. If you want brighter gauge lights, you might try LEDs, however, I don't know if you can dim LEDs like you can incandescent bulbs.

myself I would like RED lights in all gauges.

 

@jose

not sure. The lights work but to be honest only tried the dimmer yesterday but didnt see much if any change.

I was also thinking, as you mentioned, of putting in LED's. Is this a big jobby?
my friend did his truck and it looks ace. Also they are much brighter. Just want to keep the same green tone though. But red sounds kinda hot too hahah

 

ask your friend if he can dim the leds. My experience with leds is minimal.

 

It's a PITA on a Series III

No problem finding brighter bulbs, no problem finding bulbs that fit (you'll need 3 different styles). The problem is getting all the gauges equally bright. I had to do lots of experimenting and (eventually) wire-in a different socket for the tach light before getting the right combination.

An easy way to increase the brightness is to simply bypass the rheostat entirely. That'll give a decent improvement in most cases.

Cheers
DD

 

Yes,. for sure.

As to the knob on my car. I see it as off and dim. So, I leave it on dim, that's as good as it gets...

Carl

 

I bypassed mine years ago - just shorted out the rheostat. A tiny bit of improvement maybe, but you'll never get a decent amount of illumination with the stock setup.

 

Thanks Doug

is there a post with details on how to do this?
Many thanks!

 

my opinion is the trouble is not worth the little amount of brightness increase. Easier to do 6 or 7 LEDs cause you can experiment with different leds like Doug did.

my car is still in the Stone Age but unless you're going blind, how much brightness is bright enough?

 

@Jose

Thanks Jose. Its not like its underly bright. But i am a stickler for having everything work as it should.As in when it was like new. More of a personal vendetta rather than a daily necessity.

Has someone already done the LED upgrade on this model? I will do a quick search but would love to see how it all went.

Thanks Jose