Been on my fix list for a while and thought I'd share a cheap and easy fix for this. Here's the bulb and holder from my mk2 dash. Instead of buying a new bulb I used an LED I already had. I used a 5mm white LED. Fairly easy to pull the bulb off and de-solder the wires from the terminals. I think one wire had actually snapped off the bulb at the glass rather than the bulb dying itself. I splayed the legs of the LED. Longer leg needs +ve feed, shorted is -ve / ground. I thought LED would fit inside the 'cage' plastic legs but it was a bit too big - you can see how the legs are pushed out and no longer parallel. Solution was to snip the plastic housing legs off and 'float' the LED in position. LED needs 3-3.2V, feed is ~12.5V. I used this LED resistor calculator to confirm resistor needed is 560 ohms and soldered one in series as shown above. Note that LEDs are polarised / need to be 'the right way around' regarding +ve and -ve voltage connections. We can re-use the existing loom connector since it clips into the white plastic. In this case, +ve voltage comes in on the 'flat' or right side in the photo above. I marked the side of the housing with red pen to remind me while soldering Note that I sanded the LED lens to diffuse the light output to make it more like the output from the original bulb. All back together and fairly happy with the result. I did a second light for another mk2 and found the white plastic part to be slightly different. Note the red pen mark to indicate +ve voltage feed Hope that helps anybody looking for a simple fix.
Saladman, excellent work. Indeed, if you do not use a resistor the LED will just be very bright then burn out quickly. I changed my bulb and bodged in a new bulb, perhaps when it fails I will do the LED switch. The brake light is for the handbrake and the low fluid level switch on the fluid reservoir for hydraulic brakes, I didn't know that and I thought i'd share incase others have overlooked that. A bit of other info I found, the LEDs on the instrument binnacle are LEDs apart from the full beam, it is just a bulb as blue LEDs did not exist at the time, so it is a clear lamp bulb with blue lampshade.
