R8500 Dial Light replacement

[ratboy]

Sorry it took me so long, I guess I missed the last post..

Well, I had no idea what the MCD is/was on them. They look great. These are the warm white ones I used:

10 x LED 5mm Pre Wired LEDs 12 Volt Warm White 12V | eBay

I didn't notice they are all that dimmer than the green ones, but by the MCD, listed, they are. I don't think it really matters all that much, to be honest. The original bulbs are (I think) actually 16V bulbs run on 12v so they last a long time, and kind of yellowish when you look at one actually working..

And here are the green ones:

10 x LED 5mm Green Pre Wired LEDs 12 Volt 12V Prewired USA | eBay

 

[CYUL]

I did a conversion to 5mm green LEDs a few days ago on another 8500. Looked real nice. They came as clear lensed LEDs, but I took a pot scrubber to them and made them "diffused", and they looked better as backlights that way.

My camera (phone) wouldn't cooperate at the time, so I don't have any pics.I think I'm going to be getting a new phone soon..

If they are not diffused does that make them to bright for the display?

 

[Intellifax]

Ratboy replaced the lights on my 8500 using LED's. It's a great job, the light is pretty even and not too bright.

 

[ratboy]

If they are not diffused does that make them to bright for the display?

Well, it's just that you can see the LEDS like lightbulbs if they are clear, due to the intensity of the tiny little LED inside the plastic case. If you "fog them up", they kind of blend into the display better.

 

[HoboCoastie]

Hello guys! New user here. Sorry to be dredging up this old thread again.

I've cracked open my IC-R8500 and the lamps are labeled DS2 thru DS5...which eludes to the idea that there might be a DS1 somewhere?

Is there really just four?

 

[N9JIG]

DS1 is theLCD display itself.

 

[HoboCoastie]

DS1 is theLCD display itself.

Well now. That makes sense. Thanks!

 

[HoboCoastie]

Upgraded my R8500 to LED's today. Piece of cake. I didn't rough them up and you can see where they're a little too bright, but I don't mind.

 

[RadioRelay]

Finally did my R8500 today, after about a year of putting it off. It was a piece of cake, even with my average solder skills. I looked at a diffused white (too bright for me), milky blue (just didn't like it) & finally settled on diffused green. It's a nice contrast to my R75's yellow displays.

I'm glad you brought this up again, HoboCoastie, it was the impetus I needed to get mine done, once & for all.

 

[RadioRelay]

Finally did my R8500 today, after about a year of putting it off. It was a piece of cake, even with my average solder skills. I looked at a diffused white (too bright for me), milky blue (just didn't like it) & finally settled on diffused green. It's a nice contrast to my R75's yellow displays.

I'm glad you brought this up again, HoboCoastie, it was the impetus I needed to get mine done, once & for all.

---
Okay, here's what the finished product looks like. A little bit brighter at the edges, but I can live with it.

 

[ratboy]

That looks great! I want to do a friend's with either green or the "Ice blue" LEDS, but it looks like it needs to go to the shop as it's drifting a lot from VHF hi down, and he says he's going to have them put new bulbs in (I don't get this at all). Other than this issue, it's worked perfectly for a long long time.

 

[HoboCoastie]

Finally did my R8500 today, after about a year of putting it off. It was a piece of cake, even with my average solder skills. I looked at a diffused white (too bright for me), milky blue (just didn't like it) & finally settled on diffused green. It's a nice contrast to my R75's yellow displays.

I'm glad you brought this up again, HoboCoastie, it was the impetus I needed to get mine done, once & for all.

The 5mm LED's fit in the holes perfectly, but I put a dab of hot glue on each one to hold it in there just in case. The LED's that I bought had stranded wire leads so it was only going to be friction holding the lamps in place without the hot glue.

 

[RadioRelay]

That looks great! I want to do a friend's with either green or the "Ice blue" LEDS, but it looks like it needs to go to the shop as it's drifting a lot from VHF hi down, and he says he's going to have them put new bulbs in (I don't get this at all). Other than this issue, it's worked perfectly for a long long time.

---
Thanks, R-Boy. You know, I sent my R8500 away a couple of times just for bulb replacements. The last time I sent mine to Icom was after a nearby lightning strike almost killed the radio & within a week of getting it back, a couple of bulbs went out, again. I didn't know how easy it was to replace the original bulbs with LEDs, until I found this thread, on RadioRef. It seems to me that's something that Icom should have offered as a replacement lighting kit years ago. In any event, I'm glad I changed mine & hopefully I won't have to worry about that cropping up gain. If you do end up changing your friend's radio to "ice blue", please post a picture here, for everybody to see.

 

[RadioRelay]

The 5mm LED's fit in the holes perfectly, but I put a dab of hot glue on each one to hold it in there just in case. The LED's that I bought had stranded wire leads so it was only going to be friction holding the lamps in place without the hot glue.

---
That's good advice, H-Coastie. Mine fit fairly snug, so I didn't think about it at the time. If I have any problem with mine, I'll do as you suggest. My LEDs had stiff wires, so maybe they'll hold in place a little better than the stranded.

 

[N9JIG]

That looks great! I want to do a friend's with either green or the "Ice blue" LEDS, but it looks like it needs to go to the shop as it's drifting a lot from VHF hi down, and he says he's going to have them put new bulbs in (I don't get this at all). Other than this issue, it's worked perfectly for a long long time.

Icom stopped supporting the R8500 last year. Mine may have been one of the last one they serviced since it looks like they pulled support for it soon after I got mine back from their shop in Washington.

While I did not request it they did replace the dial lights and they all seem to work fine now with OEM incandescent bulbs. (http://forums.radioreference.com/icom-receivers/311759-r8500-wonkiness.html#post2440755)

I might go the LED route if these fail in the future.

 

[ratboy]

He supposedly has a guy in the Detroit area that says he can fix it, it's not supposed to be a big deal to do. If it's who I think it is, he seems to know what he's doing, and it should be fine. I don't see any reason at this point to put bulbs in it again, when LEDs are so cheap and last forever. IMO, they look better, too.

 

[N9JIG]

I had my R8500 rackmounted and decided to change it back to a deskmount over the weekend. When I did one of the lights apparently failed again, same one as before...

I might end up doing the LED update soon unless there is someone in the Phoenix area that will do it for me...

 

[ratboy]

It's really easy to do, and you can basically make it any color you want to. My friend is waiting for a bulb to go before he goes to LEDs. The radio is back and works great now. Supposedly it was a crystal that fractured making it drift badly.

 

[N9JIG]

Well, it seems that 2 of my dial lights went out recently so I decided to go ahead and replace them lights with LED's, I had been looking for LED's for another project and found this on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ANHHQ1A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 .

This is a pack of 10 each of 5 different colors wired LED's already with the resistor to let them work on 12VDC. The price was less than $7.50. The 5 colors are blue, green, red, yellow and white. I needed the wired ones to make the other project a LOT easier (carrier activated lights on my Uniden scanners).

I chose the blue ones since i needed the green ones for the other project. I opened the R8500 and saw that it would be a lot easier to do the work with the front panel separated from the chassis. This was simple, I pulled 4 screws from the sides (2 on each side) and rotated the front panel face down, leaving the 2 wiring harnesses in place. I laid it on the chassis of the radio. This put the work area in a much easier position to access them.

I cut the leads to the GOW bulbs and tweezed them out of their holes. I then cut the wire leads from the LED's and folded them over, then soldered them to the pads. I didn't need a lot of solder as the pads themselves were pretty well piled on.

I tested each one in process and they all worked fine.

Once I was all done I reassembled the radio. The display with the blue is a little darker than I would have liked but it is better than the yellowish tint with the original bulbs.

Here is the original yellow. The two end bulbs are out so it is bright in the middle and dark at the edges.

Here is the same radio half an hour later with 4 blue LED's replacing the incandescent GOW bulbs. The lighting is much more even than seen on the pictures.

The job was easy enough that I might try other LED colors. I found that I could leave the wires attached and connect the LED's in parallel to a single power point, making the swapping a breeze. Maybe I will try green if I have enough LED's left over or buy another batch. I might try reducing the value if the resistor used to brighten things up a little...

 

[FrankNY]

Rich, thanks for the post, and it may be just me, but your photos aren't showing up. Could you check on that, please?

I'm been following this thread because I have an IC-R8500 that may one day need bulb replacement, but not yet, although I don't use it nearly as much as an IC-R7000 that I owned many years ago that I sometimes left running continuously 24/7 for weeks at a time - and I never had a bulb go out in that radio either.

Both of these radios are located in a nice HVAC-controlled environment, so that factor may be contributing to the bulb longevity that I've been experiencing.

Regards,

Frank.