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If you have a BMW Airhead, chances are you’ve had to open up your instrument cluster and work on the instrument bulbs or the flex circuit bulb holder. Maybe you’ve replaced your instrument bulbs with led bulbs. But you can’t do that with the GEN bulb unless you solder a resistor circuit in, and led bulbs won’t solve a broken off copper connector tab. Are you tired of dealing with a 30-40 year old flex circuit bulb holder? Tired of trying to patch together or re-solder broken bulb socket connector ears? Do you want to renew a “barn find” and the inside electrics of the instrument pod are a mess?

 

We have developed a modern, solid state led unit to replace your old bulb holder. KATDASH is plug & play. Simply unscrew and remove your old oem unit, put the new KATDASH in it’s place and restore your Airhead instrument pod to full function with all dash indicators and gauge illumination lights. It maintains the stock look of your instrument pod, while getting rid of poor, broken or hidden connection problems.

katdash-pcb

oem 1979 bulb carrier                                             KATDASH /6

KATDASH is an all new flex pcb with ‘discrete’ (individual) led lights soldered to the flex. The unit is assembled on a new reproduction of the plastic bulb carrier body, 3D modeled to match the original bulb carrier. No more bulbs, no more corroded connections for the bulb sockets. No more trying to solder the broken copper connectors. No more testing the bulb- only to find out the bulb is fine, and the flex traces are broken somewhere unseen. And KATDASH has additional resistors in the GEN light circuit for the initial “excitement” current to get your alternator spun up, and keep your charging system charging. Works with the oem alternator, as well as modern upgraded alternator systems.

We are now building our KATDASH flex units with dark plastic body frames. We originally used a white plastic to mimic the oem (photo above) – but found out that the white plastic was not opaque enough for our new bright instrument illumination. The result is a slight, dim light bleed through into the center warning light compartments with the white body frame. This gives them a dim “glow” visible during night riding. With the switch over to dark plastic bodies, the center warning light panel will be completely dark again like the oem instrument pod.

 

Here are some actual photos provided from a customer installation. (thanks Mike)

MS-oemdash                                                                    original dash with incandescent bulbs

MS-katdash  KATDASH led instrument lighting

You can see the speedometer and tach are much brighter, as is the high beam indicator and neutral light. Both the neutral light and the turn signal indicators were designed to be easily visible in direct sunlight.

 

Yes!  Now you can actually see your instrument dials at night:

 

 

And we also have new white leds  for your clock and voltmeter. (green face gauges shown)

You’ll notice the oem incandescent bulb looks a sickly dim yellow, next to the bright white led.

The clock is not well lit with either, but it is nearly invisible with the oem bulb.