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Gauge cluster help

T

trhlz1222

Veteran CEG'er
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
919
Location
Holly Springs and Parish
well i tried to convert my svt gauges to blue but the green film ruined it. so i was wondering would a older than 98 svt work in a 98. i was told the older ones did not have the green film. is that true? also if that would fit and work right is there a way to roll the mileage back to what my car has if i can find a older cluster?
 
IIRC they all have the green film. The way to make it work is scrap(very carefully) the green film off of the back.

It's not hard but is time consuming.
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trhlz1222 said:
well i tried to convert my svt gauges to blue but the green film ruined it. so i was wondering would a older than 98 svt work in a 98. i was told the older ones did not have the green film. is that true? also if that would fit and work right is there a way to roll the mileage back to what my car has if i can find a older cluster?
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Firstly, there are no "older than '98 SVTs" as 98 was the first year for them. Secondly, I've had an odometer out of a pre-98 messing with it. I couldn't find a way to roll it back without destroying it, but it is possible to roll it forward. So if you found a gauge with less miles, you can easily advance the odometer to what your car reads.
 
IRingTwyce said:
Firstly, there are no "older than '98 SVTs" as 98 was the first year for them. Secondly, I've had an odometer out of a pre-98 messing with it. I couldn't find a way to roll it back without destroying it, but it is possible to roll it forward. So if you found a gauge with less miles, you can easily advance the odometer to what your car reads.
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Couldnt you just keep rolling it forward until it hits 000000 and roll it to the mileage you need?
 
Considering these odometers can go up to 1 under a million miles, I wouldn't recommend that. Get one that's lower, and roll it up.

They all have the green film. They only real way to do it is to take off all the green film with a small screwdriver or something. Takes forever, but it's the only real way to do it.
 
how hard is it to take the film off? im not worried about the time just the difficulty what kind of damage can i do to the cluster if i scrape to deep or anything? lol wanna know what im tackling. i must have though that the cluster i saw was a svt maybe it was a normal contour that was blue cant remember his username but hes gave me alot of info on leds and such
 
You'd really have to scrape hard to damage it... the worst you could do is push down so hard you go through the part of the gauge that doesn't light up, and then that will light up.
 
ok. how hard is it to remove all the needles and replace them. dont i have to recalibrate something? i was thinking of painting them orange the all the way to match my gauges
 
I bought some custom gauge overlays without the green film from this guy. http://www.blackcatcustom.ca/
I wanted to keep mine stock just different lighting so by looking at the pictures you can't tell that they are any different in the day time. Only at night the lighting is blue. Really good quality! I even got the HVAC cover with clear so I can change lighting behind there as well
 
The gauges can easily be removed many of you saw my svt custom blue overlays on my 99 ses. Ill find some pics and repost.

As for the odo its very simple to fix, they can be taking apart easily and put back together. Just dont use it for bad things.
 
well i didnt have to work today so i saw the opportunity to try and fix the gauges. i got em apart and now wondering if i remove these screws to get to the green film and if you guys know of anyway to fix this. the board shorted out cause of the led when i first put them in so know my right signal light indicator does not work. kind of annoying. here the pics
 

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About the only way I can think to fix that would be to take a short piece of wire and create a jumper. Then attempt to solder it to each side of the gap. It would take a pretty steady hand, and I have no idea how (or if) solder would take to the circuit overlay. You would probably have to be VERY careful not to burn through it.
 
auiotour said:
The gauges can easily be removed many of you saw my svt custom blue overlays on my 99 ses. Ill find some pics and repost.

As for the odo its very simple to fix, they can be taking apart easily and put back together. Just dont use it for bad things.
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i searched green film and its stated that the green film in the gauge cluster is so hard to remove without damageing the gauges that its pointless. which one is it and how do i go about it.
 
The green film is hard to remove, but it's pretty hard to damage the gauge face unless you really push down hard.

To fix that thing... just put a wire in there, then cover it with scotch tape.

LEDs need to be to the contacts bent outwards or they'll short. They should look like this from above:

-----O----- Then just push it down into the holder. I soldered the ends down to the metal for extra security, but they'll work fine without that.
 
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You need to pull the gauge faces off their plastic backings. Then scrape it off with a small flathead screwdriver.
 
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