Brightening Mustang Gauges Up With Drake Muscle Cars' LED Bulb Conversion

Author: Bryan McTaggart | 03/01/2021 < Back to Motor Life Home

Gauge lights are underrated...right up until you realize that you can't see a thing except for maybe the faintest glow possible that might show you a gauge needle. Is the engine hot? How much fuel is left? If you are finding that the answer to those questions won't be found until you find the flashlight or your phone, then it's time to do something about the lighting of your gauges. For some, it's a purely aesthetic move that makes time behind the wheel all the more enjoyable.

This 1980 Ford Mustang is a one-family car that has been kept fairly well over it's lifetime. But one part of the car has been problematic - the gauge lights have been little more than a very faint olive-green glow, with only the fuel gauge being anywhere near readable at a quick glance. On the car's last road-trip out of state, this caused problems when the engine's thermostat stuck while making our way to a show. We didn't know what was going on until we came to a stop light and the radiator started venting out, leaving us cooling our heels at four in the morning. That's unacceptable, especially for a car that is destined to get a freshly-built engine soon. So the decision was made to upgrade the gauge lights. Instead of putting in brand-new 194 light bulbs and calling it a day, we decided to use a Drake Muscle Cars 1979-1993 Mustang LED gauge light conversion kit. We chose white bulbs because we didn't want to change or alter the Mustang's neat aqua blue gauge color. With only a Philips screwdriver, we were able to make the conversion in about two hours...and that included taking off the dash "cap", which isn't entirely necessary, and a few minutes fighting the stubborn speedometer cable. Follow along as we show you what is involved!

Doesn't look too bad, right? Think again. This is a five-second exposure photograph, which is what it took to show any kind of gauge lighting in this car. Regular photos didn't even show the lights. It's well beyond time to brighten up the behind-the-wheel view in this four-eye Fox.

The first step is simple enough: remove the face plate for the gauges by removing the screws holding it into place, all at the top of the plate. Then pull the top gently towards you while pulling the face up and out of the dash.

With the plate out of the way, remove the four screws that hold the gauge pod into place (orange arrows)

With the gauge pod loose, gently pull the whole pod towards you enough to reach the speedometer cable clip. Push the speedometer cable into the gauge cluster, then press down on the clip on the gauge side to release the cable from the cluster. Once you have the cable separated, you will be able to disconnect the two electrical connectors. To unlock them from the gauge pod, press in on the tabs on the sides of the connector in a pinching motion. You can see the first, centrally-mounted one in this picture. The second connector is difficult to see without the cluster being completely removed, but it sits between the temperature gauge and the tachometer, low and to the left (looking at the gauges normally).

Removing the cluster out of a 1987-1993 Mustang is similar in scope: the goal is to get the gauge cluster out of the car and accessible. The outer shell is removed, which requires the removal and disconnection of the left and right switch pods. Then the gauge face (right of the cluster) is removed, and finally the cluster itself, which comes out in much the same manner as the 1979-1986 unit. The only real difference is the location of the connectors, which are at each end of the cluster. Take special note of the fuel slosh chip (upper left on the cluster)...do not hurt that chip or you'll have a bad day.

With the cluster out, now would be a good time to take a look at the electrical connections and the overall health of the printed circuit panels on your cluster. Make sure there are no brakes, no burns, and at the connector points, make sure that you have nice, bright copper showing instead of duller, tarnishing contacts. Electrical current likes clean metal. Our Mustang's points weren't bad, but we still hit them with 800-grit sandpaper lightly before cleaning them off with electronic cleaning spray.

Regardless what year Mustang you are working on, understand that the bulbs have polarity...meaning, they will only work in one given direction. In order to prevent any issues in case of a non-functioning bulb, we took a paint pen and marked one end of the bulb socket and the correlating point on the printed circuit. This will help in testing: if the bulb didn't come on at first, we'd turn the bulb socket 180 degrees. If the bulb didn't work after that, we'd check the connection in the socket itself. If we still couldn't get the bulb to work...then we had a problem.

With every bulb replaced (except the bulb for the BRAKE warning light, which must utilize a 194 bulb), we reconnected the gauge cluster back into the car and tested out every light. We did not reconnect the speedometer cable at this time, because if we found any issues, we wanted to be able to fix them without another drawn-out battle with the cable. Luckily, we only had two bulbs not light up on the first test, and turning the sockets 180 degrees did the trick. Note the colored bulbs for the turn signals!