How To: Makeover Your Instrument Cluster

[Tanya]

Sorry, this isn't very descriptive.. not going step by step on undoing screws and stuff, but you'll get the general idea.

I thought it was time to bring the car into the 21st century. Out with the old ugly green lights and yellow needles


Also time to get rid of the stock automatic instrument cluster (notice the normal & power mode) in favor of the manual transmission cluster.

I took it all apart to see how everything was put together








Painted the needles white (not really sure I recommend this, you MAY have problems, always do this kind of stuff when you have SPARES so as to not screw yourself)


Then waited 2 weeks for my blue Hong Kong special LEDs to arrive :eek4dance:





Took a drive up north, after struggling with rusty screws, only to find the needles are REALLY sensitive to the extra weight the paint added.

My tachometer is about 200rpms off, at least at idle, and at first my speedo needle was bouncing all over the place, but seems to have corrected itself on the drive back to Naples. All the other gauges work fine.

Picture shows the needles to be yellowish here, but they really match the numbers in real life


Being the impatient person I am, I couldn't wait until nightfall so I went to the mall's parking garage to take pics of the cluster illuminated






 

[Tanya]

Not being satisfied with the monotone blue, I ordered white LED strips in 2.4" length


Removed the clear plastic in the bottom of cluster


Replaced with strip...


I used black tape on top to block out the blue light from behind





End result:

[veno23]

Wow you did A great job I love it.

[Dougs85GT]

Great job. I'll be the first to recommend it moved to write ups.    

[Driftingwithapurpose]

yeah, this looks really good! Put this in the write ups!