Just wondering......has anyone found a suitable LED replacement bulb for the instrument panel backlighting and the god awful dim center console lighting? If so, please let me know what you found. Many thanks

 

The instrument panel bulbs are actually halogen.

The tiny bulbs used to illuminate the rockers, temp and fan and rear ashtray are 1.2 oshram 2721 - I thought I have seen 2 watt versions if my memory is correct.

 

LED lights don't work well for the instrument cluster nor the center console lights since they are dimmable. LED lights generally are not dimmable without special circuitry.

 

This is what mine looks light now. Full LED, amber yellow. You will need whole bunch of T5 LEDs, at least 10. Most of the switch back lights are also T5, but they will be reallllly bright with an LED, the only one I put LED in is double flash.

They are dimmable, a little bit, personally I set dimmer to lowest level and it fits my eye perfectly. interior lighting in 240s are not good to begain with so LED won't be much of an eye pain like morden cars.

I tried white LED before, they turned out to be slightly blue/green, because most of the light parts has a colored plastic, to make halogen lights lookswhiter and brighter. It just looks bit cheesy on the 240 interior style.

I also replaced the gear indicating light (inside the gear selector housing), rear floor light (in handbrake consle) and seatbelt buckle light (inside the buckle). All together it gives the 240 interior a very relaxing and warm feel (very comfort looking during winter, bit too warm in summer)

 

Tos use T5 LED on your cluster, you need to do some modifications, they do not fit but easy enough to make them do. Just use brass to make some contacts.

These pictures are when I was still using all white LEDs, they look bright and chill, but you can see each section of dash has slightly different color tone. The cluster looks white, the small gauges looks colder, the lower dash just all green tone.

They do their job just fine, I drove a year this way, but to me, the more I look at it the more uncomfortable I get (maybe I'm too picky). I just feel these super white LED color really doesn't go with old car very well.

The reason I go amber yellow is, it is one of the colors that I found can overcome those old colored plastic best. Can't find a really good way to say it, but it produces almost no noticable color tone difference even behind a colored plastic lense. I think red, blue, green or other strong colored LED can do the same, but those in my opinion don't suit too well. After all I will be the one sitting in it and drive everyday, eye relief is important.