Has anyone ever replaced the light bulbs in their monte's gauge cluster before? I am about to replace the bulbs in the climate control unit and noticed that some of the lights behind the speedometer are out too. I bought the climate control bulbs from carradiobulbs.com and figured I might ask if he has any for the gauge cluster as well. I guess I am a little confused as to the best way to replace them, however. It seems like the front and back of the gauge cluster housings are just held on by push clips, but in order to get access to the bulbs on the circuit board, I have to remove the gauge needles from the servomotors. My question is, once everything is replaced, how will the servomotors be reset to the correct position? There is no notch or any indication on the shaft of the motor in order to "zero" it back to the position from when the needles were removed. Hopefully, someone is actually following my rambling and making sense of it.

Also, in terms of original incandescent bulbs vs. leds, what are peoples' opinions? Maybe anyone with comparison pictures can give me a better idea of how leds will look. Thanks so much!

 

Impala/Monte Carlo Cluster Bulb Conversion

Thats a pretty good resource for what you're trying to do.


Personally I'm not a big fan of car LED upgrades. I did a bunch of LED conversion bulbs on my 5th gen monte years ago and really disliked the light output in areas meant for standard bulbs. Sure they were far brighter dead on, but light output tended to be far worse from all other angles (which made them poor for general area lighting for things like the gauge cluster, dome light etc).

Granted my experience with them is probably 15 years old at this point (and the 5th gen cluster is much different as the bulbs just simply twist in from the backside), so maybe they're better now. But Ive went back almost entirely to incandescent at this point in my car.

 

I had a local speedometer shop do my cluster (I also needed to know if my fuel gauge was bad) and climate panel with original lighting, and while it was expensive, he told me that the climate panel is tricky to get the slide ***** off without breaking the slide and that he had broken several before perfecting their removal. Just a caution.

 

So a couple of things. First, I just did a HVAC unit for a monte. Before doing it, I pulled those slider ***** off a LOT of cars in the junk yard. They come out EASY (unlike working with the Silverado HVAC). The job was pretty easy. I have not installed the repaired panel yet, but the bulbs I used as well as how GM distributed light, the HVAC panel looks great, no "hot spots". I used these bulbs:
Now, I want to do the cluster and have a problem. The overlays have a blue tint that work with the incandescent bulbs. So far any LED I put behind it, the read outs look more blue than white. I had someone claim you can fix it by removing the overlay and sanding the back of it! I was wondering if a different color/temperature LED might do the trick or a filter over the LED.

And to Bumpin's point, I don't want a cluster with LED hot spots. Their are LEDs (like the ones I used in the HVAC or "cubed" ones) that brag, no hot spots (so the light is pretty evenly distributed).

Sadly, if I cannot get the right light OR address the hot spots, I might stay with incandescent bulbs.