seriously peel off the condoms on your bulbs and you'll love how bright the red lights up on the gauges, almost like the sti gauge cluster, highly visible.

 

Mitsu ..when your bulbs blow i assume your dimmer control dont work either right? Ive been having this problem and I kno a bulb is blown since some of my tach and speedo is dark.

 

Ummm... you know I can't remember if my dimmer control worked or not when my bulbs blew, I didn't mess with it honestly. It was weird, the car had been setting up for a while due to stock head bolts stretching, and the first time I took it out I noticed the right side of the tach was very dim but when I went to replace the bulbs they had all burned out, guess this happened sometime in between. There are only 3 of these big bulbs behind the cluster, those are the ones that you want to pull the blue condoms off of, like I said my evo had white condoms on these lights, guess because it was one of the first ones, since then they have changed the part to the lights with the blue condoms. This is a super easy job to do that pays off very well.

 

The right side of my instrument cluster burnt out recently....Dealer tells me that it will take about 4hrs of labor to replace ($70/hr).....total bs....ill order the parts and do it myself. As of now the dimmer control continues to operate....thanks for the useful thread!!!
randy

 

LMFAO, what a crock o' crap, dude you can do this job in 10 minutes and that's taking your time, the only thing that is even close to a pain is actually getting the cluster out of the dash when you have all of the screws out, my best advise is to pop out the dash trim piece closest to the drivers side window with the fog light button in it, it helps when this piece is out of the way

edit: I would just go ahead and buy all three bulbs because the rest of mine blew out shortly after the first right one, I gave the part number above in a previous post.

 

My right side bulb just blew. Happy I found this thread. Just out of curosity how many miles did you guys have when it blew? Should I replace all the bulbs if the rest are goign to blow soon, or just the broken one? Oh does anyone know if the whiteface ralliart cluster comes with these bulbs?

 

I think it was about 23,000 miles or so when mine went out. My dealer replaced mine free while it was in the shop for some kind of fan recall work. Honestly, my dealer, John Crump Mitsubishi of Alabama, has been extremely good to me. I don't think I've had a regular-priced oil change or tire rotation since I got the car.

I told them I would buy the bulb and do it myself if it would cost a lot to repair, and they ordered the bulb and installed it for free.

John

 

There is def. a design defect here.........the guages are on ALL the time, regardless if your headlights are on. Do a search under "bolsen" he has a link to his website detailing all the instructions on how to replace bulbs and make your guages brighter!

 

My mini 2cent rant...
The gauges are intended to be on all time, that is how they should be. This is required because of the graphics are RED instead of white (this is realy the only reason), so they had to increase the contrast by turning on the lights so you can actually SEE them in dawn and dusk. Because of the vehicles electronic architecture, the only way to do this is to have the cluster on all the time, not just at dawn/dusk.
But I digress, I agree that this basically is a design defect because they are trying to force an existing design to be something it wasn't originally intended. It could all be corrected if the cluster just had simple white on black graphics that are easy to see any time of they day, but I guess they decided that red is "sporty".

 

This morning my speedo from 0-60 was dark. I was driving into work b****ing to myself that I would have to replace a bulb and remove my boost gauge in order to pull out the cluster. Well I'm sitting at a light and for the hell of it, I hit the dash above the cluster twice and the damn light came back on! So before you guys go and assume you have a blown bulb, give it a hit or two first. Only reason I did this is because my old 97 M3 used to do the same thing.

 

Ya know, If it wasn't for Cayman's post I never would hve noticed this thread.. I've had a light out for a few weeks now.. Right side of the cluster, I thought something died when my car was sitting.. Gotta order a bunch of spare bulbs since they seem to go out pretty frequently because their on all the time.

 

I just pulled my guage cluster out. The 0-60 part has been on and off lately and for some reason hitting the top of the dash usually turned the light back on!? Anyway, i pulled it all out and removed the white condoms today on the 3 main bulbs in the back of the cluster. Now my guages are brighter and they also all work. The bulb behind the speedo must have been lose or something because its working now.

 

Hey! any big difference in the contrast or redness after removing the "condoms"

 

Sorry to bump an old thread. But has anyone that has removed thier bulb covers had any problems after they did? Like it being to much light at night? Or does the bulb get to hot with out the cover? I am getting ready to do mine and was just wondering what people think of it.

 

^^good question, is there any reason to have the condoms on in the 1st place? If not, then the condoms are coming off this weekend, I can't see anything on my cluster during dawn/dusk.