That is really interesting. It sure would be better that those hard to get to little bulbs that fall out of the back and rattle around. Will the work with the stock switch and rheostat?
They're 12 VDC, and are dimmable. I'm not for sure how they would react with Rheostat, being they don't draw much amperage. May have to use inline resistor with rheostat. They don't put out any more heat than an incadescent, so they seem pretty safe.
How long do you think they would last? I'd hate to have to pull the gauge and take it apart if it failed.
That should work pretty good. I'm not an engineer, know enough electronics, to have an idea of what going on. LEDs are low voltage device(3-5v). If the tape is rated for 12v, then there is some resistance in the tape already to drop the voltage. How close the tape resistance is to the incandescent bulbs will determine how well the Rheostat regulates the brightness. A one watt resister could added to compensate.
Larry
Beater- Don't know how long they'd last. The one's I've installed were on day and night for a good month at the job-site. Most LED's last alot longer than their incadescent counterparts. Not to mention there is probably 20 of them on the strip. If one burns out, I doubt you notice.
LG- The strip is made up of dozens on small LED's wired in parallel. There is a resistor inline with each lamp, I'm not for sure how may Ohm's though. An entire 11 foot strip only pulls about 3 watt's, so it would be a small resistor at that.
That's about what I'd expect. My ohms law is really bad right now, but your right it's not much resistance, less than 10 ohms IIRC. I bought some LEDs on a card, and replaced the bulbs in some of the motorhome marker lites. The LEDs are brighter. I conformal coated the LED boards to keep the weather out.
Larry
The results will be like it will be very interesting to do