OK here is where I am at. I sat down and reverse engineered a few of the circuits that I had put together last year. I figured out what I was doing and made the finishing touches and now I am back on track. I even went so far as stuffing red LEDs into sockets, putting them into gauges, pluging them into the current limiter circuit, and pluging that into the dimmer switch. Definitely almost a real world test, best I can do since the 1302 isn't a runner.
My results- the current limiter worked flawlessly, I turned the know on the dimmer switch all the way CCW and they still were getting a steady 25mA. Conclussion is from 2-16.5vdc tested a constant current, theoretically it should be able to sustain around 50vdc with no ill effects. I wish I had dimmer capability but that will take some more R&Ding, also it's not nessacerily(?) plug and play cause different LEDs have different voltage drops and that messes with final value of R3. The final number of LEDs is also a factor of output current.
I took some pics of the final circuit layout and what the circuit board looks like. As far as how it the final results, I wish they were brighter. I'm putting running the LEDs at 25mA and they should be 20mA, but they can take up to 30mA so I don't want to turn that up anymore. I could take the gauges apart paint the inside white. The last option is to get brighter LEDs, all I have to do change R3 to compensate the different load.
If there is a interest in the current limiter circuit, I have enough extra parts to build a few, but I'll need a small donation
.