For those of you who are wanting to change the appearance of your instrument cluster, I have a bit of info that might prove to be helpful. Ok, in order to take the bulbs out of the sockets behind the cluster you have to break the bulb contacts loose from the socket. Then you would have to solder in new bulbs. I tried that and not too frikking easy. Plus I melted 2 of my sockets. I found an alternative! I searched and searched town for the small 194 sockets that would work in my cluster. To no avail I didnt find any. Any that were cheap enough that I would pay for. Did a bit of looking on the net and a company out of California called Bay Area Amusments sells the small sockets for a whopping .59 cents a pop, part #LB-T3T. Better than the 3-6 dollars a piece some places wanted around here. I ordered six of the sockets and they fit and work perfectly in my cluster. Just thought I would throw that out there.

 

wow i was just looking at some of those sockets at the parts store and couldn't believe how expensive they are ......got a link for that place?

 

Twist lock bulb sockets
Great to deal with. Had the sockets to me in 2 days flat. It was like 8 bucks total shipped.

 

I've always wanted to make my gauge backlight blue but i heard you had to do a bunch of crap. What all do you have to do with these sockets, just pop the old ones out and put the new ones in?

 

I think Mac on here has changed his to blue and it looked pretty cool!

 

How many sockets are there behind the cluster? This is something I'd really like to do too, just thought it would be too much of a pain.

 

There are six that you change out in the back, just install the new ones in the existing holes and your in.

 

Thanks

 

thanks for the link ...i have blue 194 4 led bulbs in there fromsuperbrightleds.com and i just soldered them into the stock bulb holders,now im selling the truck and want to put them back to stock..what a PITA

btw just went to stealership and the original bulbs with bases cost
~$10 EACH!!

 

Yea.

Thats an awesome idea 99, ive seen a few other people do that.
I think me and Chingy were among the first to do it so we took our time and didnt break any bulbs out or anything like that. If you take your time and work the bulbs out right, you dont have to break or solder anything. Mine have been rocking for like 4 years now with no problems

Now the fun part. Try to figure out how to do the window controls, cargolamp controls, 4x4 controls, and a/c controls Those are custom jobs. I love mine