First, the door ajar light would still dimly glow for a long time after the doors were shut. After posting about this problem on the DMC forum, I discovered that the original lamp delay relay found here doesn't play well with LEDs. This relay is supposed to slowly dime the interior courtesy lights once the doors are shut. The solution was to remove the relay from the fuse compartment and the door ajar light now functions perfectly again.
Dealing with this issue has brought to my attention the fact that my interior courtesy lights do not function as they should, nor have they ever functioned properly since I've owned the DeLorean. They come on when I switch them to "always on," but never come on in any other setting when the doors are opened like they are supposed to. This is not a huge deal right now, but I will try and get them functioning correctly some time in the future.
I went for a test drive after reinstalling the binnacle and I felt like the speedometer wasn't showing that I was going the right speed. It felt like it was saying I was going a lot slower than what it felt like. To test this, I used my Garmin GPS and went for a drive. Before I took the binnacle apart the first time, the speedometer was always very close to what speed the Garmin said I was going, but on this trip, I discovered that my hunch was correct and that the speedometer was showing I was going about 3 to 5 miles an hour slower than I actually was traveling.
I must not have put the needle on the speedometer in the exact position it was in before I took it apart. I removed the binnacle and put the needle to where it should have been. A test drive showed that the speedometer is now much closer, especially at speeds under 55, and then only off by 1 mile and hour at higher speeds. That is an acceptable variation for me. Here's a picture I snapped while I was working on adjusting the speedometer needle:
One other issue I discovered while converting the instrument cluster lights over to LEDs was that the parking brake light started acting strangely. The light worked correctly if the car was running or if the key was set to the "On" position, but once the key was set to the "Off" position, the parking brake light would stay dimly lit if the handbrake was not engaged. It would go off immediately if I pulled up on the handbrake, but it would come back on very dimly if the brake was not engaged.
I noticed that the previous owner had some wires coming off of the handbrake that were somehow tied into the car's alarm system. It was likely causing a small draw on that circuit, causing the LED to light up. The incandescent light must not have received enough juice to cause it to light up at all, but since the LED requires less juice to light up, it brought this issue to light.
Since I didn't feel like diving any more into the car's electronics, I simply replaced the brake light LED with the working incandescent bulb that was in there previously. Putting it all back together revealed that the light worked properly again with no glowing when the car was off. Maybe I'll dig into this in the future, but I'm not going to worry about this for now, especially since the car's battery disconnect switch is engaged whenever I'm not driving the car regularly.
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