Thanks guys! I hit the jackpot stumbling onto this gem. So very few first gens are still in good shape anymore, it's such a shame.. This truck from here on out will be taken care of and restored properly, I have no plans to do any real exterior changes.
Update:
I did some more work on the rig, converted some crummy incandescent bulbs to LED's. Cargo light with a couple bright suckers, my rear license plate lamps, and my dash lights. Bought enough to do my interior dome and map lights but they're a really old school type of lamp so I'll have to maybe convert it or something if I feel the need to.
Before dash photo. Burnt out bulbs, really crummy brightness. Poopy colors.
Started tearing apart dash
Put it all back together like an IDIOT without testing them before piecing it all back together. Assumed the LED's would work same as the incandescent in either direction... Nope. When I installed them the first time, I didn't get too thorough with removing the instrument cluster and figured if there was a colored rubber/plastic lens to give the lights color they'd be on the twist plugs I pull out but they weren't so I just left them in there. If I'm correct these LED's have a diode inside them so the electrical conduction canb only happen in one direction (polarity sensitive + & -) So the odds of putting these in randomly without any instruction to regard polarity for conduction is a 50/50 chance... 8 lights... I got 1. So this is with the colored lenses in, but with the 1 light working.
Back I go into the dash but this time to get the job done once and for all.
The reason for not completely removing the cluster before was this little guy... A small guage wire attached to the shifter column that just slides the needle that points at your "P R N D 2 1" selections to the appropriate one. Never really looked hard because it wasn't too difficult to source out how to remove this. Just a J style hook holding it on there.
Put the key in to unlock and shift down to D for some more working room
Cluster on my lap face down. Back of the circuit board you can see the twist plugs that the bulbs are in. The small groups of 3 are the signals, no seatbelt, high beam, oil light, and check engine light. The outer 3 are the illumination lights.
If you look close you can see the Torx bit screws holding the board onto the back. Just remove those and the board can be lifted off exposing the lamps and also the colored lenses.
Removed the blue colored plastic lenses
Sustained a little heavy duty damage
Decided to plug in just the board back to the dash to test the LED's before re-assembling everything once again
And voila... VERY satisfied with this. I really didn't like the blue tint on the first LED attempt, this is a much more satisfying look for me. The LED's are slightly dimmable, not a lot though before they just turn off (diode holding current is not low enough to dim these to a lower level)
Full brightness, has some glare
Lowest brightness, I think is perfect and has minimal glare. Photo shows more than there really is
I also changed the high beam and turn signal bulbs to LED's.. I love it when a car's blue high beam light is really bright. Now mine is too
And the signals are nicely lit, less glare than the photo shows.
So yeah, pretty psyched about this little nerd mod. Huge improvement and worth doing imo. Here's a side by side:
For informative purposes.. The Cummins badge lights with wait to start, e-brake, water in fuel etc, cargo light, license plate and dash lamps are all T10 wedge type lamps. I changed the Cummins plate lamps to LED's but they were acting funny (wouldn't turn on and off when they should) so I just said to hell with it and put them back as incandescents. I actually thought the LED's were too spotty on there too, the incandescents have a nicer fill area for that spot because where the light is physically located is actually off to one side of the words so the intense LED's actually made it pretty obvious.
Yup!