This is a "light" to illuminate the controls on a radio install kit for a 98 escort. It came in the car, but was never hooked up. I put 12 volts to it, both polarity combinations and it did not light. I also checked it with an ohm meter and it read OL. Does this need ac power or something? What do I need to make it light? If it is broken, I will just rip it out and throw some of my own led's in there so it will light at night.

 

I would test it by putting a replacment in it and see if it lights up, but it sounds blown. LEDs do not go so well in the dash because they are either on, or off, there is no dimming. You can get colored bulbsif you want to change the color and still have the dimmer.

 

Thanks, I just wired up 6 really tiny incondescant bulbs that I stole out of the old broken stock radio and it works fine. It would have been cool to see how that thing worked though.

 

I'm sorry I don't think I understood what you meant. The electro-luminesent lights (EL sheets) use a power inverter to convert the 12v dc to a high freq ac voltage to light them up. These are little more then small boxes that will tend to produce a high pitch whistle as they age.