Mopar Muscle Association UK

Paul,

Drop in some LEDs..........brightened my dash up no end. Less electrical draw, less heat and more light.

Realitively cheap off ebay UK too.........bulb holders look like 194s.

Easy cheap fix!

db wrote:Do you mean the main ignition regulator or does the dash have some sort of regulator? My ign is electronic and the rest of the electrical system works fine, it's just the dash that's poo.

Here is my dazzling light display

There's a voltage regulator on the back of your dash, it's visible in the upper right hand corner of your pic of you soldering ( rectangular silver grey thing that plugs in with three prongs ), it's purpose is to reduce the voltage to the dash from 12v to 5v. They're known for playing up.
You can replace it with one of these......

Dave81 wrote:Paul,

Drop in some LEDs..........brightened my dash up no end. Less electrical draw, less heat and more light.

Realitively cheap off ebay UK too.........bulb holders look like 194s.

Easy cheap fix!

I know the ones you mean Dave thanks, but don't you have to wire in a resistor to get LEDs to work?

Cheers Rebel, I wondered what that was for! I'll look them up. Excuse my stupidity, but if it drops the 12v to 5v, do you then need 5v bulbs?

The 5v I believe is just for the gauges, you just use standard bulbs for the lighting. I didn't need a resistor for mine, just took one of the dash bulbs to my local spares shop and asked for the equivalent LED bulb. I just used white LED's, gives a nice glow on the original gauges and is so bright you can see the difference between off and on during the day

Resistors are needed when you use leds in indicators as it upsets the flasher relay because the lower loading makes them flash faster, wouldn't need them for dash illumination.

Thanks, I ordered a reg last night and I'll pick up some leds today

You do not need resistors in the gauge cluster Paul, just plug and play......

Went on ebay and bought, white, red, green, Amber and blue, to suit all requirements (have a look in my workshop thread if you want).......as I said, cheap as chips as far as a Mopar upgrade goes!

If you convert the external bulbs........well that's another issue!

LEDs have lit up the dash lovely Thanks for the advice. I bought the reg but haven't fitted it yet, I don't think I need to now.

Me and the 3 girls had a great blast to the Nats in my sensible family car
The only slight hitch, was all the bolts on the right front disc coming loose to the point where the heads of two bolts carved half way through the caliper bracket. The noise began very suddenly at around 70mph in the right hand lane of the M6 I dived across 3 lanes and stopped on the hard shoulder. It sounded like a problem at the rear, I got under the back but saw no damage. I rocked the car and the axle moved 1/4" side to side- loose bolt on the Panhard rod. Too bloody dangerous to do anything there and the was a sign for Wednesbury 2/3 mile. Great, I'll crawl along the hard shoulder and get the hell off the motorway. The sound by now was very clearly at the front. When I found a peaceful spot to stop, I looked through the front wheel and the problem was pretty obvious as you can see! The bolts were all loctited AND spring washered and still worked loose. I'd loctited them all after the Southsea trip a few months ago when half the caliper to hub bolts fell out!

I'll be seeing my mate Terry tomorrow to get a pair of new brackets made. And I'll be drilling and lockwiring EVERY bloody brake bolt!!

My new slogan... "Never relax with Mopar muscle"

wow that was lucky find.

not far off snapping that bracket

Glad the LED's worked for the dash.
Really lucky that the calliper bracket held out and didn't snap

Nasty I wouldn't use spring washers in that situation,they don't like the heat being generated.

I think you're right Steve. The washers were there already though, presumably since manufacture! The other issue is with them being cap-head. Quite a small Allen key size too, it just bent so I wasn't getting them as tight as I'd like. I'll get a set of socket-mounted ones now.

The car's never been driven this much before so I'm finding all the weak links!
I've always lockwired the bike brakes as they vibrate loose, I'll be a lot happier when I've done the car too. I'll be investing in a pile of drill bits

Shoddy workmanship typical B. T

Today I 'ave been mostly... breaking tiny drill bits.

I'll have a lot more confidence in the car now

So I went out for a blast on Wednesday and a nasty noise appeared while doing 70-ish. It's so noisy anyway it's really hard to define a new noise... Best I can describe is a clonking out of balance sort of noise.

I knocked it out of gear and coasted a bit and the noise seemed to stop. I slowed to about 40, back into gear and it seemed ok. Then it came back but not as loud, I know I should have stopped but was on a dual carriageway and close to home so I limped it back.
I whipped the rockers off last night, no obvious problem there. I'll work my way backwards today...