Ducati Monster Forum

Just wondering, if you could change the faceplates on your gauges what color would you pick?

Remember that you have an Orange LED inside your gauges...how willing would you be to change to the color of the LEDs?

maybe.......
blue might be cool

+1 to blue definitely.

There was once a man, who changed all the orange LEDs in an E46 BMW dash to blue. It looked friggin amazing, but he said it was so hard he wouldnt reccomend it. (many of the LEDs were 1/4 the size of a match head)


looked incredible and to this day i wish i had the balls to try it. (oh im a bmw nut also, hence the reference)

(http://www.dtmpower.net/forum/attachments/e46-3-series/34654d1189882070-blue-led-dash-help-091507194156.jpg)

changing LED's? not for me.
changing the face plate i could see. carbon fiber?! ;D
i think it would look pretty sharp in CF with the orange LED's coming through.

My LEDs are white right now, might try blue. looks pretty cool.


What about the faceplate of the gauge? Keep it stock?

He man,

I would do mine exactly like you did.  Although I don't have the balls to do it so I am going to send mine out to Blue Guages to get the oranges replaced with whites.  I also want to change the orange led for the immobilizer to red.  Other than that maybe same guage face with red lettering/needles?

I had mine custom made and it is blue Indiglo Like on wrist watches.

its really not hard at all. it only cost me $10 for the cost of the LEDs. you just need to be careful with the needles, since its really easy to break them.

doenst seem like most people care about having their guages changed to a diff color...

I agree with you He Man,

I can't believe this is not something that everyone does.  The orange leds are hard to read and fugly.  I might try and do it myself.  Let me know where you got the led's

Desoldering Ducati Monster Gauges (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iSTPAJg57w&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fducatimonsterforum.org%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D14188.30&feature=player_embedded#ws-lq-lq2-hq-vhq-hd)



thats how long it took me to remove the LEDs, multiply it by 2 to install them. whole thing probably took less than an hour, however i was watching the Rangers vs Bruins game..so maybe 2 hours. lol im about to throw up a video on how it looks at night time, i just took the bike out for a ride to meet goldenchild and the LEDs are actually PERFECT, not too bright to bother you while your looking up like the orange LEDs and still excellent vision.

If you wanna do it yourself, i got extra LEDs for sale in the parts for sale section. (your in jersey right?) if ur near the city, we could always meet up and ican walk you through it. all we need is an outlet.

SDC10494 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kI58PMgvYA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fducatimonsterforum.org%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D21799.0&feature=player_embedded#ws-lq-lq2-hq-vhq-hd)

a buddy of mine is doing this to his thruxton. They sell kits for his bike in blue and red. Stock is whitish orange. He has a silver thrux with red stripe, should look sick. Maybe i can get him to video the whole thing to post here.

http://www.newbonneville.com/html/led_gauge_conversion.html (http://www.newbonneville.com/html/led_gauge_conversion.html)

I checked with Blue Gauges, no luck as my S4 is the old style filament bulb. I'd love to get LED. I work in the oil industry, we build some if our own equipment. I may check to see if they can make new gauge faces as they build custom gauges with our logo on them. Anyone else heard of an attempt on the S4?

The orange wasn't a big deal before, but now after seeing them in white.. Now I hate the orange..   [bang]

Nice job, looks pretty easy. How did you get the gauges apart though?

Dude, those white LED's look sweet! How did you get the gauges apart?

see tutorial. didnt post up pics though. If you got the balls to do this, then you dont need no stinking pics!

696?????? white?????

what

the 696 dash is orange. the whole thing is digital. is it possible to change it to white, like a 1098?

open it up and report back. ;D

hey now, I'm no Guinea pig

girly men....pshhh  ;D

I would change it to white or a dark purple and change the face to either black or CF (probably CF if it could look proper, it would suck if the black faded.)

I may make the display a slightly brighter and red-er as in less orange.  The reason for not changing the color to blue (which is cooler) is for function.  Blue kills your night vision and its even worse looking through your helmet (more glare). not as bad in a car because you dont have some plastic/glass to look through (which makes glare worse).  For function sake, i would either make the amber color a little brighter or red-er

Why does blue kill your night vision? I have never experienced that...

ok...that's a pretty cool mod for the bike.   Nice job, HeMan

dependent on how bright it is but "scientifically" (and i have to verify) , i was under the impression that the further away from red, the brighter the light and blue being the furthest visible light color.  Hence using red light to read stuff in the dark if you want to "save" your night vision or the dark room in a photo both having a red light so it dont mess up the photos but there is red light so that you can see.

I notice on my s2r800 that when i turn on the high beams, and the blue indicator light comes on, its bright enough to darken my night vision. 

But also, from experience a blue incandescent light is worse for your night vision than a blue led light so an led may not be as bad.

If im talking bs, than please point it out.  Dont want misinformation.

from Wikipedia:
Biological night vision

In biological night vision, molecules of rhodopsin in the rods of the eye undergo a change in shape as light is absorbed by them. Rhodopsin is the chemical that allows night-vision, and is extremely sensitive to light. Exposed to a spectrum of light, the pigment immediately bleaches, and it takes about 30 minutes to regenerate fully, but most of the adaptation occurs within the first five or ten minutes in the dark. Rhodopsin in the human rods is less sensitive to the longer red wavelengths of light, so many people use red light to help preserve night vision as it only slowly depletes the eye's rhodopsin stores in the rods and instead is viewed by the cones.

The blue Hi-Beam LED is bright, so i took a piece of tinted plastic and laid it over top of the blue lens inside the cluster. It made a noticeable difference. It s still blue, and still bright enough to see it is on in the day light.
And as far as glare goes, and i am not talking about the color of LEDs here:
Bright dash lights create glare, period. Try turning your dash lights all the way up in your car on a dark night, drive down an unlit road, then turn you dash lights up just so you can read everything clearly....you should notice a big difference from the glare bouncing off your face/cheekbones. Or you could put on that fancy black stuff ball players use to cut the sun's glare....road warrior style. Seriously, the visor isn't helping the glare from the dash.
with that said, i don't mind the orange, since i don't see that color on many other vehicles, but if i were to change it would be to red, mainly because of the above statement.

Ah, thank you for confirmation.  The glare from our helmets really do not help with glare as you said.  I think blue looks really nice but a solid red looks good as well and saves some night vision.