Like many British cars of the period, E-Types came equipped with Smith instruments, which are poorly lit and almost impossible to read at night unless you are driving on a country road in complete darkness. As designed, the speedo and tach are each lit by two small incandescent bulbs, one on each side, which shine through clear green plastic bulbs. When these bulbs stop working, which is frequent, they are a challenge to replace because the dash has to be removed first. Thanks to Bob Moore on the Jag-Lovers List we have a better solution, which comes in the form of electro-luminscent strip lighting. The kit is the right price, around $7.00 here, and the results are amazing. I used the traditional green, but other colors are available.
Here’s how you do it: After removing the dash and speedo from the car, carefully remove the glass face by twisting the bezel ring. You will see that the ring is held on by tabs. Be gentle, and try to minimize prying on the tabs unless there is no other way to get it to turn. You don’t want to crack the glass. Next, remove the guts from the instrument. On the speedo, simply remove the two screws on the rear. On the tach, there are four screws. The two recessed screws hold the tach internals together, leave those alone. Just remove the two protruding screws, and gently let the internals slide out. Try not to touch the black face of the instruments to avoid leaving fingerprints.
The EL light strip kit comes with one 5-foot strip of light tape, plus a small 12-volt converter box that powers the tape. You will need two kits, one for each instrument, but since each converter box can power two strips, you will end up with an extra box. To install, simply connect the power lead (red) from the converter box to the red/white wire in the harness that powers the instrument lights, and ground the black wire. Remove the string of bulbs and retain if ever originality needs to triumph again. The light strips are 1/2″ wide and self adhesive. Once you cut the strip, the portion not attached to the connector is useless. First measure out a length of the EL tape long enough to wrap around the inside edge of the instrument, plus a little extra. As Bob suggests, I wrapped mine about 1 1/4 times around, positioning the connector at the bottom. Put the edge of the tape as close to the outer edge as you can. The following photo taken by Bob Moore shows how it’s done.
Run the connector plug wire out through the hole in the back, and put the instrument back together. On the speedo, I ran the plug wire out the middle, where the speedo cable receiver sticks out. There is a rubber gasket in the back of the speedo that can protect the wire, pass the wire through the side of that. I mounted the converter box on the metal dash support to the left of the fuse panel, there was a captive nut already there that was just perfect. Just drill out the mounting hole in the plastic converter box and you’re there.
As you can see from Bob’s photo below, the results are literally night and day:
1969 Jaguar E-Type Restoration 