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So I am changing all the lights on my Cherokee to led, except the headlights. My question is regarding the hvac panel, and the fog, defrost, trans, and rear wiper switches. It is an older, 91, everything I find is about the later model dash.
I didn't do anything fancy, just swapped to white, no color. But the hvac and the other 4 switches mentioned (74 bulbs) light up very blue. It's not the end of the world cause my radio is blue, but I would prefer them to be more white. Is there a film on the back side of these that may be removed?
I am doings similar thing. In the 92/93 the fittings for the bulbs I will pop out and add resistor with LED from radio shack. Instrument gauges and all.
Glad i used the search function, i would really like an answer to this as well.
Is there any way to remove the blue film in the shifter and hvac? With white LEDS, the shifter and hvac controls will glow blue.
I'm not sure how to remove the middle hvac plug, if someone could tell me how i'm willing to take it apart and see if that film can be removed.
Edit-
I took apart the HVAC panel that the lights shine through, it was pretty simple because the black face just clips on.
There was a rubberish film coating where the lights shine through, but it apparently had no effect on color. It looks like the blueish tint is in the plastic itself, so there's nothing that can be done with that.
The shifter on the other hand, is much easier. If you pop your shifter **** off and remove the shift panel, you'll see a blue plastic tab on either end of the glass. You can grab it with pliers and pull it out with a little effort. I might recommend finding a piece of drafting Mylar to replace it because you'll be able to see right through the numbers to the other side, the plastic helps diffuse the light.
Edit again!
Just realized you have a 91, i misread that as 97 the first time.
My jeep's a 99 so i'm not sure if this all applies to you :C
Last edited by Ceril; 03-09-2015 at 05:06 PM.
Reason: more information
There was a rubberish film coating where the lights shine through, but it apparently had no effect on color. It looks like the blueish tint is in the plastic itself, so there's nothing that can be done with that.
How easily you give up! This will take some experimentation on your part, but there may be a solution. Here's what I would do:
Rosco and Lee are two companies that make sheets of colored material for changing or adjusting the color of light for motion picture and television production. These sheets of material are called "gels" (although there's nothing actually gelatinous about them--the name comes from the original process of applying colored gel to a clear backing). You use some of these gels to correct the color of light so that it matches. You use other colors for lighting effects. These companies also make theatrical gels for use in stage productions, but the television and film gels are much more subtle and are better for color correction.
Both of these companies make little swatch books. Examples are pictured below. You can order these on line for just a few bucks, but you can often get them for free if there is a TV/motion picture lighting company near where you live. You just go in and ask if they have any lighting gel swatch books, and they'll often just give you one. They are basically salesmen's samples to get motion picture techs to buy more gels.
Once you have the swatch book, you're going to want to take it apart and experiment with color correction. Once they're loose, be very careful to keep the paper identification tags with the gels themselves so that you know which gel is which. Otherwise you won't know what gel to order once you find the right one.
If the light from your panel is too blue, you will want to use yellow or orange filters to correct it to match the rest of your lights. Try several of the shades from your swatch book until you get the correction perfect. There are so many variations in color that one of them is bound to work.
Once you know which gel will correct the color, most of them can be ordered in small square sheets, from which you can cut pieces to fit your panels. If you got your swatch book from a local video equipment rental place, they may even have a roll of the gel you need and may be willing to just slice you off a small piece for free if you ask nicely. Television productions throw away tons of that stuff. Ask if they have any scraps laying around.
Last edited by extrashaky; 03-10-2015 at 09:35 AM.
How easily you give up! This will take some experimentation on your part, but there may be a solution. Here's what I would do:
Rosco and Lee are two companies that make sheets of colored material for changing or adjusting the color of light for motion picture and television production. These sheets of material are called "gels" (although there's nothing actually gelatinous about them--the name comes from the original process of applying colored gel to a clear backing). You use some of these gels to correct the color of light so that it matches. You use other colors for lighting effects. These companies also make theatrical gels for use in stage productions, but the television and film gels are much more subtle and are better for color correction.
Both of these companies make little swatch books. Examples are pictured below. You can order these on line for just a few bucks, but you can often get them for free if there is a TV/motion picture lighting company near where you live. You just go in and ask if they have any lighting gel swatch books, and they'll often just give you one. They are basically salesmen's samples to get motion picture techs to buy more gels.
Once you have the swatch book, you're going to want to take it apart and experiment with color correction. Once they're loose, be very careful to keep the paper identification tags with the gels themselves so that you know which gel is which. Otherwise you won't know what gel to order once you find the right one.
If the light from your panel is too blue, you will want to use yellow or orange filters to correct it to match the rest of your lights. Try several of the shades from your swatch book until you get the correction perfect. There are so many variations in color that one of them is bound to work.
Once you know which gel will correct the color, most of them can be ordered in small square sheets, from which you can cut pieces to fit your panels. If you got your swatch book from a local video equipment rental place, they may even have a roll of the gel you need and may be willing to just slice you off a small piece for free if you ask nicely. Television productions throw away tons of that stuff. Ask if they have any scraps laying around.
The problem is I want the lights to be white, not blue yellow or orange would make them Green, I don't think any color filter could make blue look white
Unfortunately... Thats just the way it is.. I got ultra bright white LED and it seemed to be better, it's barely blue at all. But it will have a blue tint unless you modify it
The problem is I want the lights to be white, not blue yellow or orange would make them Green, I don't think any color filter could make blue look white
Have you ever heard of complementary colors?
Most of us learn about complementary colors with crayons. With any type of pigment, complementary colors are two colors that mix to make black. For example, if you mix red and green, you'll get black.
There's a whole other set of complementary colors for light. Mixing two complementary colors of light produces white light. Generally speaking, mixing blue light and yellow light will produce light that looks white to our eyes.
Most types of light have more than one color in them. Sunlight, for example, has the entire spectrum in it, which is why you can run it through a prism and split it into the colors of a rainbow. What color the light appears to you depends on how much of each wavelength is present.
If you have a blue light, most likely there are other colors in there as well, but it looks blue to you because there's more of the blue wavelength in it than anything else. If you put an orange filter on that light, the orange material blocks some of the blue light. What passes through is shifted along the spectrum toward orange. Somewhere in the middle between obviously blue and obviously orange, the light is going to appear white.
What you have in your dash is a white LED that has some of the orange filtered out of it by the tint in the plastic, so that more blue is passing through than other colors. To fix the color, you have two choices. You can change the color of the LED so that it has more orange in it to overcome the blue filter, but that could be expensive, time consuming and difficult to get the right color LED.
Or you can use another filter to counteract the effects of the blue tint in the plastic. What would happen then is that the plastic would filter out some of the orange, leaving mostly blue light. Then the gel would filter out some of the blue that remained, bringing what's left back to white.
Exactly what color you need to make that happen would be impossible for me to predict, because LEDs are not continuous spectrum lights, and I have no idea how much orange is being stripped out by that blue tint. That's why it could be any of a range of colors from orange to yellow.
There are a couple of ways this doesn't work. If there's simply not enough orange light left after the blue is filtered away, that would make the light coming through the panel very dim or possibly block it altogether. Or there could be some other colors in there (green or magenta) that might make it difficult to match exactly.
But I think it's worth a shot, especially if you can pick up the swatch book for free.
My bona fides: I have an undergraduate degree in motion picture production with a concentration in cinematography from Florida State University. My first career was film and television production, in which I spent more than a decade dealing with lighting and color correction problems very similar to this on a daily basis. While I have now left all that behind, the rules of physics with respect to light did not change when I changed careers.
Most of us learn about complementary colors with crayons. With any type of pigment, complementary colors are two colors that mix to make black. For example, if you mix red and green, you'll get black.
There's a whole other set of complementary colors for light. Mixing two complementary colors of light produces white light. Generally speaking, mixing blue light and yellow light will produce light that looks white to our eyes.
Most types of light have more than one color in them. Sunlight, for example, has the entire spectrum in it, which is why you can run it through a prism and split it into the colors of a rainbow. What color the light appears to you depends on how much of each wavelength is present.
If you have a blue light, most likely there are other colors in there as well, but it looks blue to you because there's more of the blue wavelength in it than anything else. If you put an orange filter on that light, the orange material blocks some of the blue light. What passes through is shifted along the spectrum toward orange. Somewhere in the middle between obviously blue and obviously orange, the light is going to appear white.
What you have in your dash is a white LED that has some of the orange filtered out of it by the tint in the plastic, so that more blue is passing through than other colors. To fix the color, you have two choices. You can change the color of the LED so that it has more orange in it to overcome the blue filter, but that could be expensive, time consuming and difficult to get the right color LED.
Or you can use another filter to counteract the effects of the blue tint in the plastic. What would happen then is that the plastic would filter out some of the orange, leaving mostly blue light. Then the gel would filter out some of the blue that remained, bringing what's left back to white.
Exactly what color you need to make that happen would be impossible for me to predict, because LEDs are not continuous spectrum lights, and I have no idea how much orange is being stripped out by that blue tint. That's why it could be any of a range of colors from orange to yellow.
There are a couple of ways this doesn't work. If there's simply not enough orange light left after the blue is filtered away, that would make the light coming through the panel very dim or possibly block it altogether. Or there could be some other colors in there (green or magenta) that might make it difficult to match exactly.
But I think it's worth a shot, especially if you can pick up the swatch book for free.
My bona fides: I have an undergraduate degree in motion picture production with a concentration in cinematography from Florida State University. My first career was film and television production, in which I spent more than a decade dealing with lighting and color correction problems very similar to this on a daily basis. While I have now left all that behind, the rules of physics with respect to light did not change when I changed careers.
First, thank you for the explanation.
I'm going to get my hands on a sample book asap, and I'll let you know how it goes
I'm going to get my hands on a sample book asap, and I'll let you know how it goes
As I think about it a little more, you may not even have to take the book apart to find the match. Just swing the gels out and eyeball it until you get something that looks right.
03-06-2015, 08:01 PM
LED dash
yellow or orange would make them Green, I don't think any color filter could make blue look white
