Speedometer Needle Illumination

locotrucker · August 23, 2010

I had noticed a while back that the red illumination for my speedometer needle had been fading away little by little. Well now it has faded away completely so I can't tell how fast I am going and that is not good when you are traveling on the interstate. I sure don't need any speeding tickets because of a faulty speedometer needle. Has anyone else had this problem and if so, how do I go about "fixing" it myself? I am an avid do it yourselfer so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

'93 gs300

cduluk · August 24, 2010

This has been talked about a million times on here...

Try a search, but you're not going to find much on a DIY repair, as it's pretty complicated. Best solution would be to purchase used WORKING needles on ebay and do a swap.

The needles are illuminated with a bunch of little tiny SMD's (tiny LED lights) in a row. But, Lexus engineered the wiring incorrectly, so after time they heat up too much and slowly burn out one by one. They heat up so much, that they can literally melt the housings. This is why it's nearly impossible to replace each individually. Only solution is to replace the entire needle.

locotrucker · August 31, 2010

This has been talked about a million times on here...

Try a search, but you're not going to find much on a DIY repair, as it's pretty complicated. Best solution would be to purchase used WORKING needles on ebay and do a swap.

The needles are illuminated with a bunch of little tiny SMD's (tiny LED lights) in a row. But, Lexus engineered the wiring incorrectly, so after time they heat up too much and slowly burn out one by one. They heat up so much, that they can literally melt the housings. This is why it's nearly impossible to replace each individually. Only solution is to replace the entire needle.

Wow! I did'nt know all that about the illumination but thanks so much for explaining it to me. Can you get these needles from lexus? I guess if you could they would be expensive to buy from lexus. I had thought about just painting it with flourescent orange paint or something but that would look really crappy. At least I would be able to see it though. Anyway, thanks again for your response.

intakerGS · August 31, 2010

If you like to go the 'hard' way, here's a thread to look into: burnt out needles ;)

cduluk · September 1, 2010

IMO that's not worth it. If you're going to spend all that time, you'd may as well retrofit some LS400 CCFL needles in there.

Unfortunately, you can't get the lexus needles from Lexus (you can only get the whole cluster), the only way to get them is to get them from ebay. just ebay "lexus needle" and you should find several auctions. Only issue is that your GS uses different needles from those in the ES300, so you need to make sure the ones you get are from another 93-97 GS300. I would also purchase at least 2 (presently) working needles of each meter (speedometer, tachometer, gas, engine temp) as they might burn out in the future. The needles aren't that expensive. <_<

And beware of any "repair services" as they don't actually repair them properly. They just rip out the guts and throw a single LED at the center facing the tip, which don't illuminate the needles entirely.

Go with used factory needles. <_<